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.
A Simple 3 Step Inbox Process To Make Clearing Your Tasks Fast.
Episode 338
Sunday, September 1, 2024 • Duration 12:45
This week, how to process your task manager’s inbox quickly and effectively so you can get focused on what needs to be done.
How To Develop Your Productivity System For Success.
Episode 248
Monday, September 19, 2022 • Duration 13:34
So, you’ve created a fantastic system for keeping yourself organised and on top of everything being thrown at you, and you’re happy with the apps you have that support you. Now, how do you stay consistent using your system?
How To Teach Productivity And Time Management To Your Colleagues.
Episode 246
Monday, September 5, 2022 • Duration 12:54
Podcast 244
Becoming more productive and being better at managing your time is not about the hustle culture or squeezing every spare minute out of the day. It needs to be more human than that. That is what we’re looking at this week.
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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.
Hello and welcome to episode 247 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 part of the productivity mix that rarely gets talked about is personal maintenance. By that I don’t mean the organising, structuring, apps or systems, but the deeper maintenance areas that are generally neglected, yet in the end have a bigger impact on your productivity than anything else.
For instance, how effective are you when you don’t get enough sleep? I know from my own personal experience if I get less than six hours sleep, my productivity is terrible. I generally can do an hour or two of focused work in the morning, but after that I find it difficult to focus, I often have to take a nap and my mood and energy levels are low. That’s certainly not a great place to be if have a lot of deadlines to meet.
This week’s question is about the non-obvious productivity essentials that when in balance, helps you to stay organised, focused and calm no matter what is thrown at you.
So, with 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 Jenna. Jenna asks, Hi Carl, I’ve read a lot of your blog posts and I understand the importance of using a task manager, a calendar and notes, but I often find myself wondering if there is something deeper or bigger that is also important for being productive. Is there something I am missing?
Hi Jenna, thank you for your question.
Yes, you are right. There is a deeper, more personal part to being more productive than just using task managers and calendars. The task managers and notes apps you choose to use is the sexy part of productivity, yet really when it comes to measuring your effectiveness, the tools you use will have very little effect.
What will have an effect are less sexy, so don’t get talked about enough. Let me begin with sleep as I have already mentioned that.
We know that getting a good night’s sleep leaves you feeling great. You have more energy through the day, you can focus better and your mood is positive. According to Matthew Walker, a renown sleep scientist and author of the book: Why We Sleep, get less than six hours sleep and all sorts of problems will manifest themselves. For instance, a lack of sleep effects your appetite. Your body will tell you you are hungry when in reality you are not. This will lead you to snack, and more likely snack on the wrong kind of foods—donuts, bread, cookies and other sugar rich foods.
Not only does a lack of sleep contribute to weight gain, but because of the types of foods we crave when suffering from a lack of sleep, we get the post meal slump, which leaves us feeling tired and unfocused.
Then in the evening, when you should be spending some quality time with the people you care about, your mood is not great. You’re tired, have a serious lack of energy and will be uncommunicative. Over time, this will put a strain on your relationships which in turn will result in you being focused on the problems that causes instead of the work that needs to be done.
Now, how much sleep you need at a personal level will be different from other people. I know from my own experiments, I need around six and a half to seven hours, other people need closer to eight.
To find out how much sleep you need, you can do a simple experiment. For seven days, sleep with no alarm. Let yourself wake up naturally. This might not be possible when you are working, but it is a great experiment to do when you are on holiday or taking a vacation.
Make a note of how many hours sleep you got, and then average it out once you have seven straight days of data. That will give you your daily sleep requirement.
Once you know your sleep requirement, build that into your daily schedule. For example, I generally need to wake up around 7 AM, and I like to read in bed before going to sleep, so my bedtime is 11:30pm. This way, I can read for thirty to forty minutes before going to sleep.
Your sleep time needs to be protected. It’s huge part of being effective every day, so compromise of what you each day, but never compromise of getting your sleep requirement each day.
Next up is physical exercise. Now, we are not talking about going to a gym every day or running every morning. Of course, if that’s what you like to do, do it. But exercise really means movement.
Human beings are designed to move. We are not designed to sit around all day.
So what does this mean, how much movement do we need each day. Well, this is difficult to measure, but for most people we need to be doing at least thirty minutes walking each day. Those thirty minutes should be strung together.
Now, if you are over thirty-five you need to be doing a little lifting each week too. From around the age of thirty, you will be losing between 3 and 8% of your muscle mass each decade, which increases exponentially after sixty. That might not sound very much, but over time this is going to make you weaker and less effective with your daily activities.
Again, this doesn’t mean you need to be going to a gym. But you can take advantage of cleaning chores. I wash my own car for example, it has me moving my arms, shoulders, squatting and lifting. I also clean my office twice a week. I will move the chairs, sofa and tables to get the vacuum in, all designed, not only to keep my office clean, but to get some movement in.
You were designed to move, so move.
Another area to look at is your diet. We know what you eat has a huge effect on your health and well-being. Eat a diet rich in processed foods and refined carbohydrates, and your health will decline to a point where your future self will not be spending time doing activities you enjoy, but rather spending it in and out of hospital. Is that the vision you have for your later years? I hope not.
What we want is to live an active, healthy life and that involves enough sleep, a little exercise and a good diet.
There’s a lot written on diet and eating well and I’m certainly no expert in this area. However, my wife and I decided to remove refined carbohydrates from our diet earlier this year and it’s been amazing. I no longer feel hungry through the day. My energy levels remain consistent through the day and I feel fantastic. No more headaches, indigestion or fatigue.
If you want to learn more about what to eat and when, I would recommend books by Dr Jason Fung, particularly the Obesity Code and Dr Mark Hyman. These doctors have done a lot of research into what to eat for optimal health and will open you eyes to how a lot of the food we are eating is damaging our health and well-being.
So, there are three foundational areas where, with a little attention, we can build a strong support system to our productive ways.
Ultimately, you will be at your most productive when you are well rested, physically fit and supported by the right kind nutrition.
However, that takes care of your physical well-being, what about your mental well-being. Something that has gain a lot of attention in recent years.
Part of the problem here is society has become a lot more do, do, do, with little time for rest, rest, rest. However, we need time for ourselves, to reset, think and reflect.
This does not mean hours spent watching mindless TV shows and escapism. What it means is pursuing activities that bring us joy. For instance, doing puzzles, spending ten minutes a day meditating and reflecting.
How can we bring these elements into our lives? Well, create a personal morning routine. You only need thirty minutes, but those thirty minutes are packed with setting you up for an amazing day.
To give you an example of a morning routine. I start my day by making coffee, while my coffee is brewing, I do two minutes of stretches. Nothing strenuous, just some light shoulder and core stretching to get my blood flowing.
Once my coffee is brewed, I sit down and write my journal for ten to twenty minutes. This has become my favourite time of the day. I get to reflect on how the day went yesterday, capture my thoughts and brainstorm ideas that may have come to me through the night.
I end my journal writing by listing out my two objectives for the day. Then my day begins.
I would also recommend you have an evening closing down routine. This does not need to be a lot of time. For me, it’s really about deciding what must be done tomorrow and a quick look to see what appointments I have the next day. In all, I would say my closing down routine takes around five to ten minutes.
Finally, give yourself thirty minutes or so with the people you love and care about. One thing my wife and I have done pretty much since we began dating over twenty years ago is to chat for at least thirty minutes each day. We both live busy lives, but no matter where we are in the world, we will alway have our thirty minutes.
We humans are social animals. We need that connection. No matter how busy you are, you will always be able to find thirty minutes or so to connect with the people you love. Make it a part of your day. You will never regret it.
So, there you go, Jenna. Many of the things I’ve mentioned here, I know is common sense, yet so many people neglect these basic areas. It’s why I have written and spoken about designing your “perfect week”. This is where you create a bank calendar in your calendar app, and pollute it with the activities and routines you want to adopt. Doing it this way you will surprise yourself how much time you really have.
I hope this has helped and thank you for your question, Jenna.
And thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
Hello and welcome to episode 246 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 common issue I come across with becoming better organised and more productive is staying consistent using the system you have developed.
The fun part of becoming more productive and better managing your time is the setting up of a system, choosing the apps you are going to use and getting stuff into that system. The hard part is staying consistent with it over time.
The problem is once the excitement of creating something new is over, you still have to do the work and the work has to be done day after day. That’s the boring part and it’s then that most people’s systems break down.
This week’s question is all about this and I hope my answer will shed some light on another part of a strong, supporting system that often hides in the shadows but needs to be developed so your system disappears into the background and a process of doing your work comes to the foreground.
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 Greg. Greg asks, Hi Carl, for years I’ve been searching for a productivity system that I can stick with, but I have never been able to stay with any system. I’ve tried them all from GTD to your Time Sector System. It’s always exciting at first believing this time I have the right one, only to find after two or three months I’m a disorganised mess again. Am I missing something?
Hi Greg, thank you for your question.
I don’t think you are missing anything essential, but you may be missing one element. That element is a process.
Let me explain. Your productivity system is only a system. It’s a place to collect things you need to pay attention to. Things like email and messages that require replies, tasks that come your way and meeting requests that need to be put on your calendar.
However, a productivity system is just that, a system. Once you have that in place you need to develop the processes that allow your system to work and it’s the process that is boring. It’s just something you do day after day.
However, while at first following a process can be boring, over time it disappears into the background and becomes more of a habit you no longer need to think about. A task comes to mind, and you collect it into your task manager. A meeting request drops into your inbox and you check your calendar to make sure you have the time to attend the meeting. These actions are done automatically without thinking.
Unfortunately, to get to that point, you have to go through boredom. It’s boring to look at the same list every day and check off the tasks. It’s boring to sit down for ten minutes at the end of the day and plan the next and it’s boring to review the same projects week after week in a weekly planning session.
Once the excitement of a new system and set of apps disappear, you’re left with having to do the work and that’s not fun.
I’m reminded of a story Simon Jefferies, a former British Special Forces soldier talked about when he was going for selection to the special forces. The first part of that selection process is two weeks in the Welsh mountains in the UK where every day you are given a map reference point, which you have to memorise, a heavy backpack and told to get there within a certain amount of time. The problem is, you don’t know how long you have to get there. Oh, and each day the weight of your backpack is steadily increased.
Simon talked about simply focusing on the process. Waking up at 4:30 AM, preparing his feet, putting his boots on and doing the climb. When he finished, he made sure he ate a meal that would aid recovery, sorted his feet out, washed and dried his socks and got to sleep as quickly as he could.
His goal was to pass selection and he knew if he followed a process every day and focused on getting through the day, he would achieve his goal.
It was boring, but it helped him through the relentless pain, tiredness and boredom of climbing up mountains every day.
Most people quit—to give you an example, around 200 people start selection every year, and by the end of that first two weeks, 60 to 70 per cent have dropped out.
Giving myself ten to twenty minutes at the end of the day to process my inboxes and plan for tomorrow is boring. But I also know the consequences of not doing it. Not knowing what my important tasks are for the day and where my appointments are before I start the day never leads to a good result. Something will inevitably be missed and that always leads to a lot more work as I scramble to get back on top of my work.
My goal is to have an effortless day. To get my most important tasks done and to move projects forward. I know, that those ten to twenty minutes at the end of the day give me an advantage and stack the odds in my favour. Not doing it leaves me vulnerable to the unexpected things I should have known about and missed appointments and tasks.
Following the process is not about the new and shiny apps, it’s about doing the work. New apps, and new organisation systems don’t help you do your work. They destroy your productivity because you are having to learn how to use these new apps, transfer all your old data across and deal with the unfamiliar. The more familiar you are with your apps and system, the more productive you will be.
So how do you build days that feel effortless? Well, start the day the same way each day. I recommend you develop a morning routine that you enjoy—something to look forward to. For me, that’s a cup of coffee and sitting down for ten to twenty minutes with my journal. For others that could be ten minutes of meditation, a walk in nature or some exercise. Choose things you enjoy doing.
The first forty-five minutes of your day needs to be dedicated to you. If you have a young family, adjust your wake-up time so you get your morning routines in before your kids wake up. It’s about making your morning routines a non-negotiable part of your day and not something you will sacrifice at the first opportunity.
Next is to find a period of two to three hours each day for deep, focused work. Now this applies to weekends too. You may not be focusing on your work-related tasks on a weekend, but there are always things that need doing around your home on a weekend. Treating weekends differently to the working week will not serve you. Morning routines are done seven days a week, not just for work days. The same applies to your two to three hours of deep focused work.
Us humans were not designed to sit around all day doing nothing. We’ve evolved to be incredibly smart, flexible organisms and our bodies need movement. Now we are not talking about 180 mile bike rides or 20 mile runs on a weekend, but a gentle walk for thirty to forty minutes, cleaning your home and going out to the supermarket for the weekly shop all things you could build into your weekend routine.
Now, as for when you do your deep focused work, that will depend on the kind of work you do. For me, I have control over my schedule each day so, I fix my focused work for between 9:30 and 11:30 AM. I also have another focused work session between 7 and 9pm. That’s the nature of my work. I create content and coach people. I do my calls generally later in the evening or early in the morning and I protect my afternoons for exercise and errands.
For you it may mean you need to find two to three hours of focused work between 9 am and 5 pm. I would try to do your focused work as early in the day as you can. It’s less likely those unexpected emergencies will arise in the morning—they have a habit of rearing the ugly heads in the mid to late afternoon.
Now, this is where your daily planning and focus time connect. It’s during your daily planning, that you decide what needs to be done in your focus time. Don’t leave it to chance. If you do that, you’ll open up your tasks manager and look for something to do and you will be presented with a long list of tasks. Inevitably you will seek out the easiest tasks. What you do in your focus time needs to plan in advance so that when the time arrives, you get straight into it.
The biggest challenge with all this is it takes time to develop the processes and develop habits. Following this advice for one day is a great start, but it has to be repeated the next and the next until you do it without thinking. I cannot imagine going to bed not knowing what I need to do tomorrow. Equally, it would feel incredibly strange not to wake up in the morning, make coffee and sit down for at least ten minutes to write in my journal. These are habits I’ve worked on for the last five years or so.
Now you might think finding new apps to play with is all part of the fun, and in a way, you would be right. But that approach is never going to improve the thing you want to improve—your time and task management. However, when you focus on your processes for doing your work, you will find not only do you get the joy of creating something yourself, but you also get to tinker and optimise your processes over time.
I’ve been down the road of app switching and while there is an initial buzz in setting up a new app, it will inevitably descend into disappointment when you discover something you used in your old app doesn’t work in your new app. And then the search for another new app starts.
Building your own processes is far more fun. You have ownership of the process, you get to share it with your colleagues and it will grow with you.
I hope that has helped, Greg. Remember, you won’t find what you’re looking for in a new system or app. You will find what you are looking for in your processes. Look at these, build your own and enjoy the process of optimisation and fine-tuning.
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.
Hello, and welcome to episode 245 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show.
I am usually asked to help someone when their productivity and or time management has collapsed. This usually happens because, since the day they started their first job, they have been able to breeze through their work, relying on their boss or customers to tell them what to do.
I know when I started my work life, for the best part of the first ten years, there was also someone in the background telling me what I needed to do next and holding me accountable.
Inevitably, there comes a time when you will be given responsibility for your own work. You’re given more freedom to decide what to do with your time and you too now need to guide new members of the company and tell them what needs to happen next.
It’s at this point if you do not have a system to manage your work, projects and responsibilities that things begin to crack and fall apart.
So, this week, I am looking at what you can o to avoid this from happening and to help you transition from where you are today to the next level—whatever that may be—be that promotion to management or starting your own business.
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 Riccardo. Riccardo asks: Hi Carl, I’ve recently been promoted, and I’ve found myself drowning in work. I am having to take a lot of work home and working late into the night and at weekends. Do you have any tips on managing a sudden increase in workload?
Hi Riccardo, thank you for your question and congratulations on your recent promotion.
One of the most important things you can do to be prepared for increasing workloads is to have a ‘how can I do it better mindset’. When I learned the power of this simple question, a lot of positive changes happened for me.
To give you one example, many years ago, not long after I became a teacher, I was assigned what was called a free talking class. This class took a topical news article, which we read out in class, then discussed it. Having one of these classes a week was manageable, but when I had to prepare fief articles for the week, what was originally an hour of preparation turned into six hours.
I had to find a suitable article, highlight difficult words and phrases and create three to five questions to get the students talking.
Spending six hours on a Sunday looking for and preparing articles was not my idea of using my time on a Sunday well. So, I asked the question: how can I do this better?
I soon found I could spend the week collecting articles into a read list as I was reading the news each day—this was something I did every day anyway. If I came across an article that might be suitable for my free talking classes, I could save the article (I had to use my browser’s bookmarks for this back then—no easy-to-use read later services then) and all I needed to do on a Sunday was to prepare the document. I managed to reduce those six hours down to ninety minutes.
It’s a simple yet powerful question we can all use with tasks and jobs that we feel are taking too much time—How can I do it better?
If you are ever feeling overloaded and stretched to your limit, it usually means the processes you have in place are too complex, or you haven’t fine-tuned them, so they work seamlessly.
One of the reasons so few people ever become consistent with daily and weekly planning is because the first few times you do it, it takes a long time. It would not be unusual for your first weekly planning session to take two hours or more. Likewise, your daily planning will likely take thirty-plus minutes when you first begin doing it.
However, those first few are important because as you are doing them, you learn what needs looking at and what doesn’t.
In David Allen’s Getting Things Done Book, he advocates reviewing all your projects each week. Yet, most of your projects don’t need reviewing so frequently. I have about twelve projects left for this year. To follow the GTD standard, I’d be reviewing projects that are not moving forward right now. That’s a waste of time. I know these projects are not moving forward, nothing needs to be done on them for the next two to three months, so I don’t review them.
The only projects I look at are my current, active ones. These are moving forward and all I am looking for is what needs to happen next.
Let me give you an example of a small project I have at the moment.
I am re-doing my profile photos so I can update my website. This small project was complicated a few weeks ago when I had my eyes tested and ordered a new pair of glasses. These glasses took a couple of weeks to arrive, and now they are at the opticians having the new lenses put in.
This is complicated by a big public holiday this weekend, so I don’t expect my new glasses to arrive for around ten days. As I don’t know when they will arrive, I cannot book an appointment at the photographers. So, this project is on hold for now.
This means that when I did my weekly planning on Saturday, that project was skipped. Everything I needed to do is done. I’ve got the new glasses, my eyes have been tested, and I now have to wait for ten days or so for the new glasses to arrive. Nothing will happen next week. So, that project is not reviewed.
Now, I do have the next task in my task manager—book photographer—but it is in my next week folder. Nothing needs to be done this week, so I don’t need it coming up and distracting me. I will see that task when I do my next weekly planning session, and I can decide if I want to bring things forward or not then.
Everything you do can be improved by a process. Once you have a process in place, you can then apply the question: how can I do it better? To the process.
Now, you didn’t mention what your old role was and so I don’t know what changes have occurred with your new role, Riccardo, but let’s say you were previously a salesperson and now you are a sales manager. This is actually quite a big change in a person’s work.
You’ve gone from managing customers and prospects to managing salespeople who do that. So, the first step is to establish what your new core work is.
Is it allocating targets to your team? Developing forecasts for your boss? Hiring new salespeople? Training your sales team?
This is the first step. What is your core work? Once you know what your core work is, what does that look like at a task level?
Let’s take forecasting as an example. We might be told our new responsibility is to present a monthly sales forecast every month at the departmental heads meeting. That’s great. We know what one of our core tasks is. However, what does that look like at a task level?
The danger here is we add a task that says: Prepare this month's sales forecast, yet is that really the task? What does that involve?
It could be you need to collect current sales data, review last year's sales data and calculate your forecast based on market conditions and past sales. That’s not a single task. That’s a minimum of three tasks.
If this were your core work, you might have a task in the second week of the month telling you to collect the data. In the third week, you could add a second task to read up on the current market environment and perhaps add the new figures to your sales forecast file.
Now, what was possibly a four-hour task has been broken down into tasks that take no more than an hour or so.
You set these tasks as recurring tasks in your task manager, so they come up when they are due, so you no longer need to keep them stored in your head.
Now to deal with the current issue of having to take work home with you, what is the work you are taking home? What’s preventing you from dealing with that work while you are at work?
Now, a lot of this extra work is caused by too many meetings throughout the day and interruptions throughout the working day.
The first step here is to gain control of your calendar. This begins by blocking times out in the day when you are not available for meetings. The great thing here is you do not need to block a great deal of time. Most people find if they can get two hours a day for focused work, that is enough to stay on top of the critical work. This leaves six hours each day for meetings and being available for other people.
Ideally, you want to block the same time out each day, but that may not be possible. If not, create the blocks, and when you do the weekly planning and move them around so they fit into your days for the following week.
Next up dealing with interruptions. Here you need to learn to say no. That’s hard, particularly for salespeople, because they come from a place where everything is possible and yes is the default.
Again, this doesn’t need a lot of effort. I remember when I was working in a law office, my boss had a fantastically simple system. If he need time to work on a difficult case, he would close his office door. This meant we all knew if his door was closed, we could not interrupt him. If it was open, we could walk in and ask anything.
My boss closed his door around three or four times a week, and everyone knew the “code”—so to speak.
Don’t be afraid of closing your door. If you explain to your team when your door is closed not to disturb you, your team will respect your request.
I remember, no matter how urgent something was, if my boss’s door was closed, I would have to wait. If I had a screaming client on the end of the phone, I would calmly explain my boss was unavailable at the moment, but as soon as it was available, I would ask him and get back to them. For four years, I never had an issue with that.
So, Riccardo, the first step is to list out your new core work. What does that look like at a task level? Get those tasks set up in your task manager or calendar as recurring tasks or events.
Get comfortable blocking time out on your calendar for focused work. Then when you are in a focused work session, make sure nobody disturbs you.
Finally, make sure you are doing a weekly daily planning session. Remember, not all projects need attention every week. All that really matters is what needs your attention next week. In the daily planning session review your tasks and appointments for the next day and make sure they are realistic. Don’t try and be a hero and convince yourself you can attend six meetings and clear fifty tasks—you can’t, and you won’t. Get real.
I hope these ideas help, Riccardo. 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.
Hello and welcome to episode 244 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.
Productivity has a bad name. Many believe it’s about maximising your time doing work, so your company can squeeze the most value out of you without having to pay you more.
But becoming more productive and better at managing your time is and should never have been, about companies exploiting their workforce. Personal productivity is about building balance into our lives. A life where we can earn a reasonable income and have time to spend with the people we care about without becoming overwhelmed, stressed or burnt out.
But how can we do that with all the demands on our time? Well, that’s what we will be looking at in this week’s episode.
Which 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 Ann. Ann asks, Hi Carl, how do I convince my team that becoming more productive is to help them, not just the company? Every time I try to teach them to be more productive or be better with their time, they don’t want to know.
Hi Ann, thank you for your question.
This is one of the sad things about the work of time management and productivity. For a lot of people, they think it’s all corporate mumbo-jumbo and is designed to “exploit the workers”.
Now, perhaps in the early days of mass manufacturing, that was the case. Hungry, ambitious factory owners wanted to squeeze every last drop of energy from their workers so they could maximise their profits from their endeavours.
However, we’ve come a long way since then. Today, we are much more aware of the need for adequate rest. Indeed many countries have laws protecting workers from exploitative bosses. The European Union countries have what is called the Working Time Directive which sets limits on the number of hours workers can be asked to work in a week.
In recent years, we’ve had the hustle culture trend—where if you want to build your own business you need to be pushing 100 hours+ each week. This has been widely advertised by the likes of Elon Musk and Gary Vaynerchuk as a good thing.
Well, is it? To me that depends.
In the early days of starting my own business, the business was my total focus. I was working up to eighteen hours a day because I was working two jobs. I had my regular teaching work and in my spare time I was developing my online business.
The thing is I never felt exhausted or close to burn out because I was loving every minute. I couldn’t wait to start the day and I never wanted the day to end. Sleep, back then was an inconvenience to me.
But that kind of working is not sustainable in the long-term.
And that’s the key to this. There will be times when you need to pull out all the stops and work long hours. But that should never be the default position.
Very much like when we lived an agrarian life. The years went in seasons. The spring time was for planting, the summer was for nurturing and protecting our crops. The autumn was the harvesting of those crops and winter was for relaxation and maintenance. Spring and autumn were our busiest times. During those periods we were working from daybreak to sunset, likely seven days a week. In the summer and winter, we worked less hours.
Now the way I see productivity and time management is by getting to grip with how we are using our time, we can build balanced and sustainable lives. We have time for our relationships, to take care of our health and to develop our knowledge and skills while working a full-time job.
It’s not just about our work. Work is a part of our lives, but it is only a part of our lives.
When you think about it, the average person works forty-hours a week, yet a week has 168 hours. That’s roughly a quarter of our week. What do we do with the other three quarters?
Becoming better at managing your time and ultimately more productive allows you to complete all your work tasks within those forty hours, so you can enjoy the other 126 hours. That may mean ensuring you get at least seven hours sleep each evening. Taking some time out for exercise to protect your health and for spending quality time with the people that matter to you. That to me is the best reason for getting better at managing time and being more productive.
But it is more than that. Being more aware of time and what we do with the time helps us to focus more on what is really important to us.
It’s true at some point, our career will be high up on our list of priorities. Most people want to advance their careers, perhaps they have a goal to become a leader in their organisation, or ultimately to start their own business. There will be times when eight hours a day will not be enough to achieve what you want to achieve. That’s fine, as long as it’s temporary.
What I find with the most productive people is they make their productive and time management practices a part of who they are. They develop processes that while are flexible to deal with the unexpected, enable them to have the time available for exercise, family and friends.
I remember reading an article about Cheryl Sandberg a few years ago, that described how her mornings were focused on getting her children ready for school. She ensured there was always time for a family breakfast before her kids headed out to school and she headed to the office. Equally, she made sure she was there when her kids returned from school later in the day.
It’s her time management and productivity practices that help her to manage her family life as well as her professional life. Any article you read about Cheryl Sandberg will show you where her priorities lay.
And that’s where your Areas Of Focus step in. It’s these eight areas that inform you where you priorities are. Once you know what your areas of focus are, what they mean to you and what you need to do each week to make sure you are giving sufficient time to them, you can build those activities into your weekly life.
For instance, keeping fit and healthy is a core area of focus for me. So, I have a two hour block each day for exercise. One my favourite times of the day is the hour my wife and I take Louis for his daily walk. He gets on with his thing and we can talk and laugh.
While we don’t schedule these walks on a weekly basis, it’s something we do plan each day.
A couple of questions you can ask your colleagues, Ann, is what is important to them? What would they like to spend more time doing? This moves the narrative away from the word “productivity” to something more interesting.
Now, you may get answers like spending more time sitting on a beach drinking cocktails. That’s fine, because what you want to do is to connect the notion of better time management and productivity with the idea that by being more intentional with their time, they can build habits and practices that will enable them to do more of the things they want to do.
Nobody wants to be sitting on a beach with a cocktail in hand worrying about what’s in their inbox. While you might be at the beach, you’re not mentally there. You’re still at work. That’s not a good place to be.
Having processes and systems in place allows you to completely turn off from work and focus yourself on being present with the things you are doing in the moment. When my wife and I are walking Louis, I’m not thinking about the email I need to respond to or the next YouTube video I will be recording. I am present.
Time management isn’t really about managing time. You cannot do that because time is a fixed resource. What we can manage is the activity we do in the time we have available. So, the only question we need to answer is what are we going to do with the time we have each day?
How much sleep do you want to get each day? How much time would you like to spend exercising, socialising, resting and doing your work? This is where creating a calendar and calling it your perfect week helps.
With your “perfect week” calendar, you start with the things you want to do on a regular basis. For instance, I like to have ninety minutes each day for exercise and an hour a day for walking Louis. I try to get seven hours sleep a night and I like to have an hour at the end of the day for reading and learning.
So, these are scheduled on my perfect week calendar. In total, I like to have ten and a half hour a day for sleep and my own activities. Eating takes up around two hours a day—I like to cook dinner as it gets me away from the computer screen. So in total I get to spend half my twenty four hours on myself and family. The remaining twelve hours can be given over to work.
Now as it’s my own business I run, twelve hours is perfect. For me my work is a way to help people which is my biggest motivator. Helping people regain a better relationship with their time so they are spending it doing the things they want to do is my purpose in life.
That doesn’t mean I do spend twelve hours a day working. Some days I do, others I don’t. For instance, I won’t do any work on a Saturday night. That’s reserved for meeting friends or watching British detective dramas—it’s a hobby of mine to watch these shows trying to work out who did it.
It’s when we can get to decide what we do with our time that we regain control over our time. Remember our work is twenty-five percent of the week. The remaining seventy-five percent is ours to chose what we want to do.
I hope that explanation helps you, Ann. I think the secret is to change the way we see time management and productivity. It isn’t just a bout our work. It’s about our life. If we want more time to do things we want to do, we need to manage the activities we do in the time we have available.
I hope that has helped and thank you for your question.
It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.
Hello and welcome to episode 243 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show.
I have a confession to make. I cyber stalk very productive people. In particular, I stalk authors who publish books every year without fail, content creators who never fail to publish a podcast, blog post or YouTube video every week (or more frequently in some cases) and business leaders who manage multinational companies and still have a private life.
I’ve also had an interest in the people in the companies I’ve worked with who were the top managers or salespeople.
I am fascinated with how they do it. How are they so productive with the work they do?
The truth is, they all share something in common and this week’s question relates to this commonality.
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 Martine. Martine asks: Hi Carl, you’ve mentioned in a few of your blog posts and videos that you get a lot of inspiration from highly productive people. What I want to know is, are there any special habits or tricks these people use that most people don’t?
Hi Martine, Thank you for your question.
You are right; there are a few tricks these people follow that the vast majority don’t. I suspect that the reason most people don’t follow these tricks are multifaceted, and they are not easy to follow.
First, there is an inherent human characteristic that will always prevent you from becoming more productive, and that is the need to be liked. We have this need to some degree or another.
The so-called “culture wars” are a great example of this. People are queuing up to be a part of their chosen tribe, and social media has given them a voice. They want to be liked by their tribe so much, that they will say increasingly wild things.
Left or right, there seems to be a rush to be the most outraged because someone had the audacity to disagree with something their tribe believes “passionately” about.
Yet, what makes humans so great is our diverse opinions. It’s fascinating to learn why someone believes the things they do. Learning about those beliefs and thoughts behind those beliefs has helped the human race to progress at an incredible speed.
However, this desire to be liked means we will sacrifice our dreams and goals and the things that are important to us, so we can be a part of the crowd.
I saw this a lot when I first arrived in Korea twenty years ago. I was told that family was very important to Korean people. Yet, when I arrived here, I discovered that the majority of married office workers thought nothing about staying late in the office because their boss and co-workers were staying.
Nobody would leave the office until the boss left. It caused me to stop and question how could their family be so important when they put being in the office until 10 or 11pm as a higher importance than getting home to be with their family.
Over time I was educated. These office workers (mainly men in those days), felt that earning their salary and getting promoted and ultimately getting more money was their way of taking care of their family. Nobody questioned this thinking back then.
Now, I should caveat this. This is generally no longer the case. The younger generations who have now come through into the workforce don’t do this in most cases. But in some small to medium-sized companies, that sentiment is still living and breathing.
It was another example of being a part of the tribe. The time was an extension of their family.
Now the most productive people I’ve met do not subscribe to this mentality. They are driven, focused and know precisely what they want out of the day.
A few months back, I watched an interview with Sylvester Stallone. While most of us see Sylvester Stallone as an action hero actor, he’s also a prolific writer.
Every day, he’s working on writing a script.
The thing that stood out for me about him was each day, he will spend four hours writing—with his phone switched off, and he’ll spend ninety minutes to two hours exercising. That six hours a day is taken up with the things he loves doing.
After that, he’ll eat with his family and socialise. But nothing gets in the way of the two things that are important to him.
John Grisham, the author, writes every day. He wakes up early, goes to his writing room and will spend the next four hours writing. Once again, no phone, no interruptions. From 6:30am to 11:00am nobody can reach him. He’s working on his next novel. As he gets closer to finishing the book, he wakes up earlier and earlier, often beginning his writing at 4am.
Stephen King, another great author, does something similar. He writes for a set period of time each day.
Now, when you analyse this, there’s nothing difficult about it. They know what they want to do, and they get on and do it.
I recently finished learning about Charles Darwin. He also had a set routine. He’d wake up early, go into his study, and for the next four to five hours, he would research and write. Nobody was allowed to disturb him.
Now for most of us, we may not have the luxury to spend our days doing the things we love in the same way Sylvester Stallone, John Grisham, Stephen King and Charles Darwin have been able to do. But, that misses the point somewhat.
What these amazingly productive people know is that if you want to produce work that you are proud of, you need to spend time each day working on it. No excuses. Thinking, planning and dreaming produce nothing concrete. It’s only by committing time each day to working on your craft that you will become incredibly productive. There is no other way.
Now for the majority of us, not answering a colleague’s email message within a few minutes or instantly responding to a text message would be unthinkable. I mean, what would you colleague or friend think of you if you didn’t reply instantly?
Then there are those people who believe their purpose in life is to wait around for the next contact by a client and to be instantly available for them—I mean, isn’t that excellent customer service?
Well, perhaps not. You see if you are constantly being interrupted, how will you ever be able to deliver the real service your client wants? Your client wants results—however, they interpret that—I mean, how many people say oh customer service is excellent, they answer the phone immediately?
Answering the phone immediately is not great service. Great service is delivering outstanding results for the client. If the client needs to wait an hour or two while you finish delivering real customer service to another client, they are not going to complain. They will have the confidence that you will deliver the same level of outstanding service for them.
It always amazes me that people with degrees, PH.Ds and MBAs see outstanding work as being measured by how fast you respond to an email or message.
No, that’s not outstanding service. That’s wanting to be liked by the tribe.
The first step to becoming more productive is to know, at a task level, what is important to you professionally and personally. It’s no good being one dimensionally productive—that is being productive at work and Never working on your own personal projects. It’s about knowing what’s important.
That could be supporting your kids in developing their sporting abilities by taking them to practice two or three times a week and being present—not sitting in your car responding to emails. Or it could mean taking your partner out once or twice a week to do something new. You know, being present with them and not doing it out of a sense of obligation. Doing it because you want to spend time with them.
It could be about dedicating Saturday to doing odd jobs around your home. Planning the week ahead and getting some fresh air. That’s being personally productive.
When it comes to your work, this means knowing what your core work is. It’s just like Sylvester Stallone knows his core work is to develop scripts and stay in good shape so he can continue to act. He knows he needs time each day for this work. There can be no excuses. If he does not do this core work, the work will ultimately dry up.
That same principle applies to you too. I know you are not Sylvester Stallone, or John Grisham or Stephen King, but you do still have core work. What is it? Make sure that however much time you need for this work, you protect that time. Allow no interruptions while you are doing it. After all, it’s what you are paid to do.
This means, when a colleague, a client or even your boss is messaging you, you don’t allow it to interrupt you. They have to wait. We are not ignoring them. We just know our priorities, and whatever your core work is, you get that done, then you attend to your messages and calls.
When I was teaching, I always made sure my phone was off. I was employed to teach. My boss could wait until I finished the class. Teaching my classes was my core work. It would have been wrong for me to stop my class while I took a call from my boss. It’s equally wrong for you to allow any interruptions while you are doing your core work.
Attending to your core work is not going to take you long. You could break things up. For instance, writing a blog post takes me around an hour. After I finish writing, I will respond to messages and process my email inbox. Then I get back into my next core task—planning this week’s YouTube videos or writing this script. What are we talking about here? Two hours tops before you need a break. Use those breaks to respond to your messages.
It might not make you the most popular person in your company, but you were not employed to be the most popular person. You were employed to do a job. Do that job first. You will always be judged on your results. Not by how nice everyone says you are.
The number of people I’ve worked with who lost their jobs and couldn’t understand why is countless. The usual cries of but I was always helping my boss and colleagues with their work. How could they fire me? Well, while you were helping all those other people, you were not doing the job you were employed to do.
So there you go, Martine, that’s the secret. Be selfishly obsessed with getting your core work done to highest possible standard. It won’t make you popular, but it will get you results.
And also never neglecting the important people in your life. Your work is one thing; your personal life is what stays with you. Make sure you are spending an adequate amount of time with the people that matter most to you.
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.
Hello and welcome to episode 242 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, a couple of weeks ago, I published a video on how I have my whole system set up. In that video, I shared how I bring all the apps I use together to get my work done.
I was rather surprised that a few people felt that my system was too complex. I didn’t understand why at first, and then it dawned on me. Of course, it looks complex. It was put together on a slide, and everything looks complex when it is broken down into small pieces and laid out in a diagram.
The truth is, it’s not complicated at all. It works beautifully, and I get everything I need into my system in seconds. There are no obstacles; I just know what to do when I need to add a task or collect an idea.
But, to someone not familiar with the way everything works, it will understandably appear complicated. I’m sure if you broke down your system, I would feel yours was overly complex. However, it’s nothing to do with how many apps you use, it’s how you use your apps that matter, and that’s what we are going to explore in this week’s episode.
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 Stuart. Stuart asks: hi Carl. I saw your video on how you have your system set up, and I felt that you have a very complex system. How do you manage all those apps and still get your work done?
Thank you, Stuart, for your question.
Now, this is an interesting one, and it’s certainly a good example of why we should not be copying other people’s systems. What works for me is unlikely to work for you.
You see, everyone’s way of working will be different. Not only do we do different jobs, but we also have different expectations put upon us. However, the questions are how do you know what to do and when do you do the work?
As long as you know that, it really doesn’t matter how many apps or processes you have in the background. What matters is you are getting your important work done.
I noticed from some of the comments on the video that some people see Ulysses, my writing app, as a note-taking app. I suppose Ulysses could be used as a note-taking app, but it wasn’t designed to be a note-taking app. It was and always has been a writing app.
I’ve been using Ulysses for writing my blog posts, these scripts and all my newsletters for well over six years now, and in that time, I have everything I have written. That includes 250 thousand plus words of blog posts and over five hundred newsletters. There will be over a million words written in there, and naturally, there’s very little I don’t know about Ulysses.
A big part of my work is writing, I will write around 10,000 words a week, and I want a dedicated writing tool that will allow me to get on and write in a distraction-free environment with an app that has never let me down. Ulysses does that for me.
And that’s really the whole point of choosing apps that work for you and the work that you do.
I’m reminded of an analogy I wrote a few years ago: a carpenter doesn’t use a Swiss Army knife to build a table. They could do it, but a carpenter will always use the right tools for the job.
Another thing you need to take into consideration when choosing apps is how you will be using them. Theoretically, I could use Apple’s Pages or Google Docs for writing my blog posts and newsletters. And if I only used a laptop for writing, that certainly would be a consideration. But I don’t always write using my laptop.
There are a lot of times when I am in a coffee shop waiting for my wife, and I find I have thirty minutes or so. Now, I could sit there and scroll through social media, or I can open up Ulysses and continue writing the blog post I started on my laptop that morning. Ulysses on my phone is brilliantly simple. No menus, no distractions. Just the written words and a keyboard.
I remember when I did some extensive testing of Notion a couple of years ago. Notion was great on my computer but was a nightmare on my phone. This made it unworkable for the way I did my work. Now for those who largely do their work on a laptop, Notion works fantastically. For those like me who need a lot more flexibility in devices, it wasn’t good enough.
So when it comes to my system, I use Drafts almost exclusively on my phone for collecting. For those of you who are not familiar with Drafts, Drafts is a simple note-taking app that allows you to collect tasks and ideas and send them to pretty much any app you have on your phone.
For example, if I collect a task in Drafts, When I open Drafts, I am presented with a blank screen and the keyboard. I can then type immediately what I have in mind, tap a button at the top of the keyboard, and it’s directly sent to Todoist. The original ‘note’ is then deleted. This is three seconds faster than trying to add something directly into Todoist on my phone.
However, when I am on my computer, using Todoist’s keyboard shortcuts is the fastest way to get something into Todoist, and that is how I do it.
For me, speed is everything. The less time I spend collecting and organising, the more time I have for doing the work.
One thing I have learned over the years is the more features an app has, the slower it is going to be. Often that doesn’t matter too much on a computer, but in the mobile environment, the fewer features, the better and faster the app will be.
Now, for you, having a single app for all your tasks and notes could be your preferred system. There’s nothing wrong at all with that—if it works for you.
I recently tested that when I was looking at Craft—a relatively new productivity app. Within an hour or so of testing, I realised it didn’t fit comfortably with the way I work. While the desktop app was great, trying to get things into Craft quickly on my phone (or iPad) was not so good. It, therefore, failed my test.
Your testing could be different. You are likely to have different criteria for how well an app works.
Over the last week, I’ve reflected on the apps I use. Do I have too many? Could I streamline my system? On analysis, the answer is no. One of the most important parts of becoming more productive is to have a set of apps you are settled with. Sure, there are always going to be new, exciting apps appearing, but none of them is going to instantly make you productive. You will have months of learning a new way of doing something—it won’t be instinctive, and the time cost of moving all your existing notes and tasks to new apps is never going to be a good use of your time.
A few months ago, I looked at Obsidian. A great app, but I soon realised I would need time to learn the syntax. Obsidian extensively uses Markdown—a simple syntax method to quickly add bold, italics and links. Now, I do know a little Markdown, but it does not come naturally to me.
On the other hand, I have a few clients who are computer programmers or software engineers. Writing that way does come naturally to them, and Obsidian works great.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to find apps that work the way you work. Once you find them, stick with them. Learn everything you can about them. Find the fastest way to get stuff into them, learn how to search them and make sure you make the app yours.
You cannot do that in a few weeks. It takes time. Give it time. That patience, and yes, frustration at times, pays off in fantastic ways.
Sometimes, Evernote or Todoist don’t sync immediately. Over the many years I’ve been using these apps, I know this can happen from time to time. I also know exactly what to do to fix the problem. It may take me two or three minutes to get things syncing properly again, but that doesn’t mean I have to ditch the app and find something else.
Things will inevitably go wrong. Often, it’s not the app; it’s the device. If you are unfamiliar with an app, you won’t know the difference. You’ve got to give yourself time to learn these things.
With all that said, to get to the hub of your question, Stuart, I don’t think I use too many apps. I use apps for the jobs they were designed to do. Todoist manages my tasks. Evernote manages my long-form notes, such as research, meeting notes, client notes and my projects.
I do have specific uses for apps like Apple’s Reminders. That manages my family’s grocery list. My wife isn’t into productivity apps, so she prefers using Apple’s built-in apps. So, we use a list in Reminders for our grocery shopping. This does have its advantages for me too. While I am cooking, I can add items to the shopping list using Siri.
I will leave you with this thought. Using my iPhone every day is simple. I’ve had an iPhone since 2009. However, if I were to open the phone up and look inside, it would seem incredibly complex—It is. I’m pretty sure the only thing I would be able to recognise is the battery. But that’s not the point. The point is the phone works. It does exactly what I want it to, and it does that well.
I hope that has helped, Stuart, and thank you for your question.
Thank you also you too for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.
Hello and welcome to episode 241 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.
In his book; Getting Things Done, David Allen uses the term: “What does doing look like?”. Now for those of you who have read the book, this quote probably washed over you in the excitement of learning about contexts, next action, ticklers and someday maybes.
However, these five words connect perfectly to a common issue many people face. We know we need to do something, and we have a reasonable idea of what the finished something is, but we are not clear on what we need to do in order to accomplish it.
This results in tasks that are unclear or seemingly too large to do, and we end up stalling and postponing the task.
So, this week, we’re going to look at this and see where we can get some clarity. And that means it’s time for me now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Joseph. Joseph asks, Hi Carl, I find I am avoiding doing a lot of my tasks because I am not sure what exactly I need to do. I might have a task to contact someone about something, but when I sit down to do it, my mind is blank, and I procrastinate and then don’t do it. How do you make your tasks doable?
Hi Joseph, thank you for your question.
That’s a good question, and it reminded me of David Allen's quote about knowing what doing looks like.
Essentially this means when you write a task, you need to be very clear about what action needs to be taken in order to complete the task.
I see this problem a lot when people are working on listing out their core work. One of a manager’s core tasks would be to manage a team of people. But what does managing a team of people actually mean at the task level?
You will see this also with a project manager’s role. “To facilitate successful conclusions to projects and to report progress to the responsible director”. Great, but what exactly does that mean at a task level?
This is an important area for all of us when it comes to getting our work done. If we are not clear about what our roles are within the company at a task level, we will find our most important work is neglected, and that can lead to all sorts of problems with our career.
The first step to breaking these tasks down into simple, actionable steps is to look for the verbs. For instance, if you manage a team of, say, ten people, perhaps one of your roles would be to have regular meetings with your team members to see how they are getting on and to make sure they are clear about their responsibilities.
Now there are two ways of doing this. The first is to have regular recurring tasks that say: “set up a meeting with Joanne” or “set up a meeting with Joe”. These tasks are clear, and it’s obvious what you need to do.
Alternatively, you could arrange to meet with Joanne on the first Tuesday of every month and Joe on the second Tuesday. And spread out meetings with your other team members throughout the month. Fix these meetings in your calendar, and you have clear tasks.
To write a blog post, I have four tasks. Plan this week’s blog post, write this week’s blog post, edit this week’s blog post and finally, post this week’s blog post. These tasks are spread out over three days.
I’ve been doing this every week for seven years, and I know precisely what needs to happen with each task. The planning takes around twenty minutes; writing will take an hour, editing thirty minutes and posting fifteen. Each task is clear, and that means I never procrastinate. When I plan my day, I will see the task, and all I need to decide is when in the day I will do those tasks.
And that’s an important part of making sure your tasks are clear—when a task is clear, you can anticipate the total amount of time required to complete the task without guessing, which will help you with your time management.
But how do you know what doing looks like?
This involves thinking about what you have to do. “Contact important customers”, might sound like a well-written task, but how will you contact your important customers? Email, telephone, text message? And who are you contacting? Where’s the list of names? Without establishing these two simple parts to the task, you will procrastinate when you see the task on your list.
The verb you use is “email” or “call”. And you make sure the list of important customers is accessible. Perhaps link the list to the task in the notes section of the note or turn the task into a clickable link (as you can do with apps like Todoist)
Now, this is the same with projects. Most projects begin with an abstract idea that is not as clear as we would like it to be. Even something as clear as update my Time And Life Master course”. Okay, I know I need to update it, but what do I need to do at a task level to update the course?
I know the first step would be to list out all the updates I want to make to the course first and to do that, I will need to find time to go through the course class by class, so I can make notes on any changes I want to make.
So, a simple “update Time And Life Mastery course” might seem clear, but at a task level, there are a number of things I will need to do. So, in this example, in my This Week folder, I do have “go through Time and Life Mastery Course and make notes on new update ideas”. I have this task set to recur every day this week, and I know if I spend an hour a day on it, I will have gone through the whole course by the end of the week.
I don’t need to add the next task to my task manager because, at this stage, all I need to do is go through the course. When I do my weekly planning session on Saturday, I can add in the next step. Which at this moment would be to outline the updated course, although that could change as I am going through the lessons.
This is why I don’t like to plan out projects in minute detail at the start. Too many things can change—and often do—and so all that planning time was a waste of time. I know what my project outcome is: a completed update to the Time And Life Mastery course, and I know my deadline. So, now all I need to know is what needs to happen at a task level this week.
Brainstorming next actions at the start of a project might seem like a good idea; in practice, though, all this is guessing what needs to happen and often leads to an overwhelming task list. Instead, look at the project’s objective, and decide what you need to do to get the project started.
From there, the “real” next steps will occur to you as you are working on the project, and they can be added to the project note.
A lot of the work we do is recurring work. Whether you are a salesperson, dentist, doctor or teacher.
Salespeople need to be communicating with their customers and potential customers. What does that look like at a task level?
It could involve getting a list from your company’s CRM system every morning and giving yourself time each day to contact people on that list.
A dentist or doctor perhaps needs to know what patients they will be seeing that day so they can prepare any equipment they need prior the seeing the patient. For instance, if you have a patient returning for a crown fitting, where is the crown? Is it ready for when the patient arrives?
And teachers will need time to prepare classes as well as teach their classes. How much time do you need to prepare your classes, and what tasks are involved in preparing them?
These types of tasks are recurring tasks—they are part of your core work. If you set them up as recurring tasks and ensure you have time in your calendar for doing them, they get done.
It’s no good saying I don’t have time to do these tasks. They are your core work—or part of it—you will have to do them at some point in time. Making them fixed recurring tasks takes the decision-making out of it because you know you must do them. Plus, your colleagues, students and customers soon work out your routines and are much more likely to leave you alone so you can get this work done.
Understanding what doing your work looks like prevents procrastination because each task is clear, and you know precisely what needs to be done. It’s when we are not clear about what exactly needs doing that we procrastinate and reschedule tasks.
And here’s a great tip for you. If you find you are repeatedly rescheduling a task, stop and ask yourself what doing that task looks like. The chances are, as the task is written, it is not clear, and that is why you are not doing it. Rephrase the task, and make it crystal clear what you need to do. That’s the way to ensure the task gets done.
I hope that has helped, Joseph. 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.
