The Working With... Podcast

Are you the master or slave of your task manager? In this week’s episode, I’m going to show you how to take control of your tasks. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Planning Course The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 278 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 278 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 the late 1990s and early 2000s, people were busy, much as we are today, yet we never began the day with to-do lists of twenty-plus tasks. That wasn’t the way we used to-do lists. To-do lists were for the essential, must not forget to do tasks. Most desk diaries at that time only had space for around six tasks at the bottom of each day’s column. Ironically, six tasks was the number Ivy Lee recommended when he devised the Ivy Lee method for Bethlehem Steel in 1918. That method worked then and it still works today. So what has happened over the last fifteen years or so? Have our brains diminished somehow? I don’t think so. I suspect the reason why we are struggling now is because we believe everything that must be done should be added to the to-do list, yet does it? How effective would you be if the only things you saw on your list each day were the things that really mattered? I know you would be a lot more focused. That’s what we’ll be looking at this week, so, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Michelle. Michelle asks, Hi Carl, I’ve tried so many times to use a to-do list and it always begins well, but after a few days, it becomes overwhelming. I know how helpful they are and I wondered if you could break down what should and should not be in a to-do list. Hi Michelle, thank you for your question. Let’s go back to Ivy Lee. While we don’t know why Ivy Lee chose six tasks to add to a to-do list, what we do know is anyone who has used this method almost always complete the six tasks and has enough time at the end of the day to plan the next six. Ivy Lee’s method is simple. At the end of the day, write down, in order of priority, the six tasks you want to complete tomorrow. Leave that piece of paper on your desk so when you arrive back at work in the morning, the first thing you see are those six tasks. Then, you begin at the top and work your way down the list until you have all six crossed out. Think about that for a moment. How confident are you at being able to consistently complete six tasks each day? Let’s imagine for a moment you are a university professor. Today, you have two ninety minute lectures to give from 9:00am. Your lectures will finish at 12:15pm and then you have to arrange some meetings with your Ph.D students, mark some papers, spend a little time writing your own paper, respond to your email, prepare for your lectures tomorrow and exercise. That’s six tasks. Do you have time for anything else? If you work a typical eight or nine hour day, three hours have already gone lecturing, which leaves you with five to six hours to do everything else. Exercise can be done after you finish for the day, but marking papers, writing your own paper and responding to email are not five minute tasks. I would say, if you try and cram anything else into your day, you’ve already lost the day. The key to this Michelle is to understand that time is limited. We do not have an infinite amount of time each day. Sure, you can work eighteen hours a day trying to do everything, but that is not sustainable. You...

This week, how do your task manager, calendar and notes fit together in a time management and productivity system? You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Planning Course The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 277 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 277 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 frequently asked question is how does everything fit together? By that what is meant, is having three separate productivity tools too much for something as simple as being guided toward what needs to happen next? On the surface it might well look like that. After all, why use three tools when one tool could do it all. Your calendar, could easily manage your appointments and tasks and quite a few task managers have tried this by integrating with the mainstream calendar apps. However, what is missed is the ability to compartmentalise. To be able to quickly see the big picture of your day and then to drill down deeper to the micro level and make decisions about what you can or should be doing with your time at that moment. So, that is what we will be looking at today 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 Andy. Andy asks, Hi Carl, I’m struggling to understand why I need to use a to-do list and a calendar. Everyone seems to talk about this but why not keep everything you need to do on your calendar and dispense with using a task manager? Hi Andy, thank you for your question. The truth is you do not need a task manager at all. When I began my time management journey, I used an A4 desk diary that showed a week over two pages. When open on my desk, that diary showed me the whole week at a glance. At the bottom of each day, there was sufficient room to add a few tasks and that is exactly how I used it. Appointments in their allotted time and to-dos written out at the bottom of each day. It worked brilliantly for over fifteen years. However, with that said, digital tools have made somethings a lot easier. For instance the digital to-do list allows us to create recurring tasks—tasks we would frequently forget to do. This way we can off load a lot from our brains into a digital system without feeling anxious about whether we will remember to do something or not. However, why do we need three productivity apps when in theory one could do everything for us? The biggest problem with having everything contained within one app is the overwhelm it will produce. Seeing everything on one page (and I mean everything) will prevent you from quickly seeing what is important and what is not. Generally, in the hierarchy of tools the calendar gives you the overview of your day. It tells you where you need to be at a given time. For example, if you need to collect your kids up from school at 4pm, that would be on your calendar. Similarly, if you have a meeting with an important customer at 1pm, you need to know about that and you need to see it in the context of your whole day. With tasks, you likely have ten to twenty tasks to perform each day. These will include big important tasks, such as preparing for an important meeting with your boss, to smaller, less important tasks such as refuelling your car before an early morning start the next day. Preparing for the meeting and refuelling your car can be done at anytime in the day and in terms of priority, will be less important than being outside your kids’ school gates at the...

This week, we’re looking at how to define your core work and how that translates into what you do each day. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Planning Course The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 276 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 276 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 the Time Sector Course, I introduce the concept of “core work”. The work you are employed to do or perhaps another way to look at it, the things you are responsible for at work. It’s your core work that you will be evaluated on by your employer, and if you are self-employed it is the work that generates your income. If you were never to define what this part of your work is, you would find yourself caught up in trivialities masquerading as important work. Those petty disagreements between colleagues, most emails and messages and water cooler gossip. However, defining what your core work is one part of the process. There is another, more important part to understanding your core work, which is what this week’s question is all about. This question also came up in a recent workshop I did. Defining your core work is quite different from knowing how that definition operates at a task level. Today, I hope to illuminate this important step for you. 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 Linda. Linda asks, Hi Carl, I am a Senior Vice President for a small pharmaceutical company. I took your Time Sector Course and have got stuck with my core work. I think I know what that is, but I don’t know how that works day to day. Could you help me with this? Hi Linda, Thank you for your question. Let’s start with why it’s important to identify your core work. Most of our time management and productivity issues evolve from having too much to do and not enough time to do it. This creates backlogs and that leads to you feeling overwhelmed and anxious about how much to feel you have to do. Yet, there are different types of tasks we need to do. There are the absolute, the discretionary, and the time wasters. If we do not identify what our absolutes are we end up spending too much time on the discretionary and time wasting tasks. Spending some time identifying your absolute must do tasks means you can then allocate sufficient time to get these done each week. However, in order to identify what these tasks are, we need to know what we are specifically employed to do. For example, if you are a salesperson, you primary roll is to sell your company’s products or services. This means your core work is any activity that will potentially lead to a sale. This could be calling prospects, meeting with existing customers and asking for referrals. Once you know this, you can define what these activities mean at a task level. Calling prospects, for instance, could mean you dedicate one hour each morning to call potential customers and try to arrange appointments. You could also, set aside a hour on a Friday afternoon to contact your existing customers to make appointments to meet with them the following week. A salesperson core work is not filling out activity reports for their sales manager or sitting in sales meetings. None of these activities risk leading to a sale. However, these might be important, to your sales manager, and you will need time to do them, but they should not take priority over your sales related tasks. It’s as Brian Tracy...

In this week’s podcast, I answer a question about setting some rules of engagement for yourself. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Planning Course The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 275 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 275 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. Have you ever stopped to establish some rules by which you do your work and live your life? If not, you could be missing out on something very powerful that helps you to automate what you do and reduce a lot of decision making. A lot of the issues around productivity and better managing our time comes around because everything we do is treated as unique or new. Yet, a lot of what we do each day is not unique. In fact, we are likely repeating the same steps each day, but because we have not established a routine or process for doing these tasks, they feel cumbersome and that leaves us finding excuses for not doing them. That then kicks off a cycle of pain. Take email for example, we let it pile up until eventually we are forced to do something about it, and then we waste a whole day (or in some cases a week) just trying to get on top of it and deal with the backlog. That’s not a very productive way of managing your email. This week’s question is all about how and where to establish some rules of engagement with your work. So, before we get to the answer, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice, for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Matty. Matty asks, Hi Carl, do you have any suggestions for simplifying tasks and work? I find as soon as the week starts, any plans I may have soon so complicated I never know where I should be starting. Thank you, Matty for your question. Interesting you use the words “simplifying tasks and work”, that’s what it’s all about. If we can find a way to simplify the work we do, we become faster at it and it requires a lot less thought—and that’s always a good good thing. So what can we do to make doing our work easier and more automated? Let’s begin with email and other messages we receive at work. This is an area that screams out for a process and some rules. Email is coming at us all the time. It never seems to stop. For many of you, you likely get emails through the night as well. If we were to let it pile up it would become a tedious task trying to find the important mails and messages. So, a process here would help you to automate it. I’ve talked before about setting up an Action this Day folder in your mail for any email that requires some action from you. That could be replying or reading. If you need to take any kind of action, drop it in your action this day folder. Now the process you follow is at some point in the morning you clear your inbox. And that is clear it, not scan it. Delete emails you don’t need and archive emails you think you may need in the future. Anything you need to act on goes into your action this day folder. Then at some point towards the end of the day, you set aside an hour for clearing your action this day folder. Now here’s the thing, email is still an important part of our work communication. I know a lot of companies are using internal messaging systems such as Microsoft Teams or Slack, and because of that you want to include any responses to these messages in this time you have set aside. There may be some messages that need responding to more urgently, and you will likely need to deal with these sooner, but for the...

This week’s episode is all about getting on top of your calendar so you remain in control of your most valuable asset. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Planning Course The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 274 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 274 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. Of all the productivity tools you have, your calendar is the one tool that will bring you the biggest benefits. It does this by only telling you the truth. While your task manager and notes are likely to be feature rich and new innovative ways to manipulate your tasks and notes are being launched every week, the humble calendar has remained much the same for hundreds of years. Today, we may be using digital calendars, but the layout and functionality of these digital calendars work the same way as a paper-based calendar. And your calendar is a true leveller. No matter who you are, where you live, your educational background or job title, you still get the same number of hours as everyone else. Theoretically, each day gives you a blank canvas to choose how you will paint it, and your calendar acts very much like your sketchbook. It’s a place where you can design your day, experiment and plan. Your calendar can take care of the basics by reminding you of upcoming birthdays and anniversaries. It can also be used to remind you of bill payment dates, concerts you may wish to go to and your kids’ school terms and holidays. But those are the basics. What else can your calendar do for you? Well, that is the topic of this week’s episode. So, with that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Rob. Rob asks, Hi Carl, I’ve heard you talk about the calendar being the most important part of a time management system, but I’ve always struggled to organise my calendar well. Do you have any tips or tricks to help me get more out of my calendar? Hi Rob, thank you for your question. Your calendar should be the foundation of your whole time management and productivity system. It is only your calendar, yet, of all the potential tools you may use, it is the only one that shows you how much time you have. You can fill up a task manager with hundreds of tasks and if you date them for the same day, your task manager will assume that on that day you want to complete hundreds of tasks. It’s not going to warn you that you don’t have enough time or there are important meetings to attend. It just shows you what you tell it to show you. It has no way to inform you that you are being over-ambitious about what you want to get done on any given day. Your notes is where you store information you may want or need later. It does not have any time management functionality within your system. The only tool you have that will indicate how much time you have is your calendar. It never lies to you. You get twenty-four hours each day and you get to choose where you spend those hours. And that’s the power and beauty of the calendar. Because it gives you a blank canvas, you can use it to design your day. Which means, if you delegate responsibility for your calendar management to other people, you are giving away responsibility of your most valuable asset. Time. So, with that said, how do we take control of our calendar and use it to design our day and week? When I am working with an individual who has no productivity system in place, the first area I encourage...

This week’s question is all about managing your communications and ensuring you have enough time to deal with it every day. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Planning Course The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 273 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 273 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. Last week, I talked about how by turning everything into a project was a sure fire way to become overwhelmed and overstretched. Instead, I suggested you look for the processes for doing your work. If you write articles, create marketing campaigns, deal with clients on a frequent basis, then these are not projects. They are just a part of a process for doing your work. However, there are some parts of our work that are difficult to develop processes for and one of those is handling all the communications you get each day. Prior to 2000—before the current digital age, most communications largely came from mail, telephone or fax. That meant things were relatively easy to manage—there were only three channels of communication and each one gave us a logical timeline for a response. A letter could be responded to within a week or two, a telephone call was instant—if we were near a phone—and a fax could be sat on for a couple of days. There was not sense we had to respond immediately. Today, thing are quite different. Almost all the messages we receive today could be responded to immediately. I remember reading the book: The Man With The Golden Typewriter, a book of letters written by Ian Fleming, and awed by the number of letters beginning with the words: “Please accept my apologies for the delay in my reply. I have just returned from an eight week sabbatical in Jamaica”. That’s two months to reply and nobody would have been angry. It was just the way life was back then. Not necessarily slower, just there were conventions in place and acceptable reasons for not responding in a timely manner. Back to today, how do we manage our communications so they do not become overwhelming and out of control. Well, before we get to that answer, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Annie. Annie asks: Hi Carl, I was hoping you have some advice for organising all the messages and emails I get each day. My company uses Microsoft Teams and it’s always alerting me to new messages. And Emails are a joke. It takes me all afternoon just to stay on top of these. Do you have any ideas for handling these? Hi Annie, thank you for sending in your question. It’s a timely question too as I covered communications last week in my productivity workshop and there were a lot of questions about getting on top of these. Let’s deal with email first as this is the easiest to manage. With email we can create a simple process that if followed each day, will get you on top of it and keep you on top of it. There are two parts to managing email: processing and doing. The key is not to mix the two. Processing is about clearing your inbox as fast as you can. This means when you open your inbox, the goal is to get to zero. This means you do not want to be stopping to reply to those emails you think will take two minutes or less (they rarely take two minutes—more like five or six minutes) Any actionable email get sent to an Action This Day folder and everything else is either deleted or archived. Now that’s a quick summary, but the essence is get that inbox...

This week we’re exploring the need for projects and why the way a project has been defined is causing most of your task management problems. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Planning Course The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 272 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 272 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. How many projects do you have? 50? 75? More than a hundred? Well, if you are defining a project as “anything you want to do that requires more than one action step”, as many people do, you are going to have a lot of projects. And all those projects need looking at to decide what needs to happen next. When I was researching the reasons why so many people resist doing a weekly planning session, one thing I kept coming up against was the large number of “projects” people told me they had to review, which made doing a weekly review or planning session too long. I began to realise that if our resistance was down to the sheer number of projects we had to review each week, that was something fixable because we have control over the number of projects we have. More interestingly, we also have control over how we define what a project is. If we change the way we define a project to something that fits better with the work we do, we can reduce the number of projects we have and that in turn will reduce the time it takes to complete a planning session. So, before we dive a little deeper into this, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Christian. Christian asks: Hi Carl, I’ve always struggled with managing my projects. When I look at my task Manager, I have over 80 projects. These take a very long time to go through each week and I hate doing it. (Which is why I don’t do a weekly planning session) My question is; is it normal to have so many projects? Hi Christian, thank you for your question. I’ve found those who have read and tried to implement David Allen’s Getting Things Done, do tend to have a lot of projects. This is a consequence of how David Allen defines a project. That being anything that requires two or more steps. This means, in theory, making an appointment to see your dentist, take your car in for a service or arranging your annual medical check up will all be projects. Yet, if you stop and think about this, if you dedicated thirty minutes on a given day, you could easily make all these arrangements. They certainly don’t need to be projects. Over my working life, I’ve worked in a number of different industries. From hotel management, to car sales, law and teaching. When I look back over these jobs, I cannot remember treating everything as a project. I came into work, and got on with the work. For instance, when I was working in a law office, we had around 150 cases ongoing at any one time. We never treated these cases as projects. They were our work. And our work had a process. When a new case came in, we needed to collect information and there was a checklist on the inside of the case file that we checked off as the information came in. The first step, once the new case was entered into the firms computer system was to request the information we needed. Each day, we were receiving information for many of these cases and we simply printed off the file or, if it came in my regular mail, check the information, put the documents in the case file and checked off the information that had come on...

Are the old ways still the best ways? That’s what I explore in this week’s podcast. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Planning Course The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 271 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 271 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. Have you ever wondered how people managed their work before we had computers on every desk and a smartphone in every pocket? I mean, how was it possible to manage our email when the only place we could read and respond to email was at our desks in our place of work? How did we know when we had a meeting when the only way to add a meeting to our calendar was to pull out our diaries and handwrite the meeting into it? Well, it may come as a surprise to many of you, but people did manage. In fact, I would go as far as to say people managed a lot better than they do today. Not using a digital system meant that it was far easier to compartmentalise our work. For instance, responding to letters—the things we used to communicate before email—meant we needed to be in the office. If we were not in the office, we could not respond to the letter. This meant if an important, so called urgent, letter arrived on a Saturday morning, it would not be read until Monday morning and a response would not be going out until, at the earliest, Monday evening. So, in theory, if an urgent letter was sent on Friday afternoon, you would not be getting your reply until Tuesday morning, at the earliest. And, there was absolutely nothing you could do about it. Yet, things got done. Deadlines were met and there was just as much stress around as there is today. I was lucky, I began my working life just as the workplace was transitioning to the digital systems we use today. This meant I had the opportunity to see both sides. The analogue, the midway (where it was half analogue, half digital) and digital. What I’ve learned is that there are advantages in both types of system and when you combine the best of the analogue systems with the best of the digital systems you can build yourself a robust, reliable time management and productivity system. So, before we continue, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from David. Hi Carl, When I was working in the mid-1990s, we did not have computers or smartphones but we did have a system for managing our appointments and tasks. Do you think technology today has helped us or made managing our time harder? Hi David, thank you for your question. You are right in observing that people managed just fine before computers, smartphones and iPads came onto the scene. In fact, while people still became overwhelmed, there was a better sense of time than there is today. Because we had to manually write out the things we had to do, rather than enter them into an app, we were much more conscious about what we were committing ourselves to. Today, your task manager will take thousands, if not millions of tasks, and while that may sound fantastic, it does create a problem. The problem being: when will do do all these tasks? The reality is, we cannot and never will be able to do everything. There is just too much we would like to do and a limited amount of time to do it in. When I was teaching English, I enjoyed the session where we looked at the words time and money. The two nouns share the exact same verbs. For instance, spend time on something, spend money on...

Podcast 270 Do you feel you have balance in your day? If not, this episode is for you. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Planning Course The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 270 | Script Hello, and welcome to episode 270 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, if you’re listening to this podcast, the chances are you have an interest in managing your time and being more productive. And that’s a great interest to have, but the real question is why? Why do you want to better manage your time? Is it because you feel you have too much to do or it seems all you ever do is work work work? The real reason why anyone would want to better manage their time is because they want more balance in their lives. After all, we have a lot of lives to manage. At a basic level, we have our professional and personal lives, but inside those, we may have different roles. We could be a mother, a daughter, a sister. We may have interests such as painting or sketching. At a professional level, we could be a manager of people, an accountant, a salesperson or a project manager—it’s likely you are all of these. You need to manage your team, allocate your department’s budget and make sure your projects are moving forward. The realities of life today is that there will always be something you have to do. It can be difficult to bring any kind of balance into our lives. Yet, it may be difficult, but it’s certainly not impossible if you focus on what’s important to you. 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 Mary-Anne. Mary Anne asks: Hi Carl, I know you and many other people in the time management world talk a lot about planning the day and week, but I find it’s impossible. I have two teenage daughters, a full-time career, and I have to take care of my father, who needs full-time care. I find it impossible to get any balance. There are just too many demands on me. What would you say to someone who is really struggling to find some kind of balance in their day? Hi Mary Anne, thank you for your question. That’s a great question, and I know it can be very hard to organise everything when other people are involved. The good news is, somehow you are managing everything. It might feel like you are juggling a lot of balls each day, but it does appear from your question that you are not dropping any. Now, we must return to the fact that time is fixed. You only have 24 hours a day. What that means is the only control you have is what you do in those twenty-four hours. Before we can move on, though, we need to look at out areas of focus. The eight areas that are important to all us. These range from our family and relationships to our career and self development. Now these eight areas will change in importance as we go through life. When we are in our twenties, it’s likely our education (self development) and career are near the top of our list. As we settle down into adulthood, finances and lifestyle become more important. As we age, family and friends become more and more of a priority and our career drops down the list. Your areas of focus are dynamic. As we go through the different stages of life they change in importance. Now, looking at what you wrote, Mary-Anne, it seems your family and relationships and career are at the top of your list. Knowing that, means when you...

Why bother with a weekly plan when a single crisis can destroy the whole week? That’s what I’ll be answering this week. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 269 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 269 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’m sure you’ve heard the saying “No plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” There are numerous variations to this quote, one of my favourites is allegedly by Mike Tyson; “Everyone Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth”. Now, it would be easy to take these quotes at face value and decide that there’s no point in planning the week when the chances are some crisis or another will come up on Monday morning rendering any plan you may have useless. Well, that’s not strictly true. A plan’s purpose is to guide you through the week. It’s designed to keep you focused on what’s important and prevent you from being pulled off track by these crises that will inevitably crop up. There’s always something unexpected. That could be your colleague calling in sick, an important meeting being cancelled or postponed or a catastrophic problem with one of your customers. However, having a plan means no matter what is thrown at you, you still have a road map that will guide you through the week. There’s still an objective and it’s that that ensures that while you may not be able to get everything done that you set out to accomplish, you at least get some of it done. So, today I will outline why, despite the chances of you being pulled away from your plan, it’s still important to have a plan. 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 Matthew, Matthew asks; Hi Carl, I know you always stress how important it is to do the weekly planning, but I find every time I do one, by Tuesday afternoon that plan is useless because so many issues and problems come up and I have to deal with them and forget my plan. Do you have any insights why and how planning can stop this from happening? Hi Matthew, thank you for your question. Sometimes when we talk about doing a weekly plan or weekly review many people miss its main purpose. A plan for the week is not to give you a step by step micromanaged plan for the week. It’s to give you a set of objectives to achieve that will take you from what you are today to where you want to be at the end of the week. Let me give you a simple example. Let’s say I need to get a 5,000 word report written next week. Now, logically, I would divide that work up into writing 1,000 words each day next week. That’s a plan. It’s a project broken down into smaller a steps. But what happens if something comes up on Tuesday afternoon at 4pm that requires all my time and attention. I may even have to go off site and visit an important customer on Wednesday to fix the problem. Now, my carefully laid plan of writing 1,000 words each day has been destroyed. I’m not going to be able to write anything on Wednesday and Tuesday, because of the crisis, I was only able to write 500 words. Now, the week is only half way done and I’m 1,500 words behind. Now, here’s the thing, the objective was not to write 1,000 words per day. The objective was to complete the 5,000 word report by the end of the week. The plan was to write 1,000 words, that’s now gone, but the objective still remains the same. All I need do now, when I get...

How confident are you setting up a project and delivering it on time every time? If you struggle in this areas, then this podcast is for you. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 268 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 268 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. Completing our personal projects is something we all frequently find difficult. This is largely because there’s usually nobody holding us accountable and we don’r have access to the same resources our companies will have. However, it does not have to be difficult if we follow a simple formula. I’ve spent many years studying how NASA went from a seemingly impossible challenge to successfully landing Neil Armstrong on the Moon in 1969. When that project was first floated by President Kennedy in May 1961, NASA lacked the knowledge of whether humans could survive in space, they were struggling to get a rocket off the ground, and the nobody had left the confines of Earth’s orbit. Yet, eight years later, Neil Armstrong spoke those infamous words: “That’s one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind”. Now it’s true that NASA did not have to worry about resources, Congress gave them the money to make this happen. But it was not all about the money. Sure, that helped, but the technology still needed to be invented, scientists had to work out how to get a spaceship out of Earths orbit and into the Moon’s orbit and they needed to know if humans could survive in space and if so, how. I’ve always been a believer in finding the success stories and then breaking them down to their component parts to understand how the success happened. It’s why I know there is no such things as an overnight success, there’s much more to completing a project than being in the right place at the right time. And with the Moon landings, everything is there to show you the roadmap towards completing a project—or a goal for that matter—all we need to do is break it down. And that is what we will do in this episode. So, let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Jonathan. Jonathan asks, Hi Carl, one thing I really struggle with is working on my personal projects. I have some home improvement projects that I’ve had on my list for years and I just never seem to get around to doing them. Do you have any tips on getting these projects done? Hi Jonathan, thank you for your question. Firstly I must start by saying this is something very common and you shouldn’t beat yourself up over this, Jonathan. The good news this is an opportunity to develop skills. Now, let’s begin with what I talked about a moment ago with the clarifying sentence. I used to talk about this as the clarifying statement, but somehow the word “statement” invited people to write line after line of words defining what the project was. No. That’s not what you are trying to achieve here. What you are looking for is a simple sentence that gives clarity on what you want to accomplish with the project. Going back to the John F Kennedy sentence setting the parameters of the Moon landing project when he stood before Congress and announced that the US; "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." Twenty-six words that set NASA on a course that captivated the world. Those words were clear,...

This week, I have a very special guest. Former UK Special Forces soldier Simon Jeffries. Simon talks about mindset, self, discipline, goal setting and project planning. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Links to Simon’s Websites: The Natural Edge (Sign up for his newsletter here) Simon’s Instagram Simon’s LinkedIn Page The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

This week, are you being realistic about what you can get done each day? Most people are not. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 266 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 266 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. Most people'ss problems with time management and productivity are not actually problems with time management and productivity. The problem lies with being over-ambitious about what you can get done each day. I’m reminded of common phrases such as “biting off more than you can chew”, and my favourite “your eyes being bigger than your stomach”. It seems to be almost human nature to think we can do a lot more than we really can. Let’s get realistic here.You are not going to be able to attend seven hours of meetings, respond to 120 emails and complete fifty tasks from your task manager today. If that’s what your calendar, task manager and email is telling you, you’ve just deluded yourself and it means your system is broken—even before you’ve started the day. It’s time to get real about what you are capable of doing each day. We can do a surprising amount of work in a day, but we need to be strategic and, more importantly, aware of our human qualities. Work to our strengths, rather trying to slog it out. So, without any further ado, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Kirsten. Kirsten asks, Hi Carl, than you for all that you do. It has been a huge help in my life. I was wondering how you cope with all the work you have to do each day. I don’t just mean work work, but all the personal tasks that need to be done as well. I find I never have enough time to finish everything I’m supposed to do. How do you keep your workload manageable? Hi Kirsten, than you for your question. This is an issue I’ve spent many years struggling with. I used to believe I’d wake up each morning feeling refreshed, energetic and focused on what needed to be done. I’d get straight onto my tasks, be ready for my appointments and end the day with plenty of energy to attack my personal tasks. The reality is very different. There are days I wake up feeling refreshed and energetic, there are also days when I wake up feeling tired. And focused?—hahaha, that’s a very rare occurrence. It’s that old belief we have where we say, I don’t feel great today so I’ll skip exercise today and do it tomorrow instead. Sure, it gives you an adequate excuse for today, but tomorrow comes and you’re desperately searching for another excuse not to exercise. We generally have very unrealistic ideas about how tomorrow will be different. It won’t be, unless you get real about what is required to get the things done that you want to get done. And this is where we need to know what our limitations are. How much can you do each day, realistically? To give you an example from my own experience. I know I can do three fifty-minute coaching calls in one session. I learned that the hard way. In the beginning I would schedule four or five calls one after another (with a ten minute gap between calls). After the third call, my voice was beginning to go and I was getting mentally and physically tired. I could do four, but the fourth one was a struggle. Now, I limit my call sessions to no more than three calls. That leaves me with sufficient energy to make sure my notes on each call are correct, and I am still capable of...

Podcast 265 This week, why not consistently doing a weekly planning session is destroying your productivity. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 265 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 265 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. This episode is for the 95% or so of you who are using a task manager and a calendar and not doing a weekly planning session. The truth is, if you’re collecting all this stuff and then not planning out when you will do anything about it, you’re heading for a catastrophic failure. It’s why so many people are constantly switching apps—it forces you to actually do some planning and organising, but it also stops you from doing any work. All this stuff we are collecting is information. Information we want to be reminded of, perhaps do something with or delegate it. Yet, if you are not doing any kind of planning, most of this information will get lost inside your task manager or notes app and you’ve just created a horrendous list of stuff you’ve made no decisions about. They often say information is power. This is not strictly true. Information is only powerful if you act on it. We all know how to lose weight, and we also know it is dangerous to be overweight for your long-term health. Yet statistics show that 60% of the US adult population is dangerously overweight. So there’s clearly a large number of people not acting on the information they have. However, once you do become consistent with your weekly planning (and daily planning to an extent), you will see some incredible results. The first thing you will notice is how relaxed you’ve become. Knowing you have the week planned, that nothing has fallen through the cracks and you’re ready to get started leaves you without any worries or anxieties. You’ll wonder how you ever survived without it. Anyway, enough of me going on about weekly planning, let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Amy. Amy asks, Hi Carl, I’ve taken your Time Sector course and it’s completely changed my life. I feel so much more in control of what I am doing each day. The one area I really struggle with, though, is the reviews. I try so hard to sit down at the weekend for an hour to go through everything but keep avoiding it. Do you have any tips or tricks to help me become better at these? Hi Ally, thank you for your question. I suspect a lot of the difficulties with motivating ourselves to do the weekly planning sessions is because we’ve come to think it’s going to take at least an hour. The truth is, if you are consistently doing these sessions, you will soon find it takes you less than thirty minutes. Mine, for instance, takes around twenty minutes for the most part, although I do often do a longer one on the last Saturday of the month. Let’s first look at the timing of your weekly planning session. I did quite a bit of experimenting with the best time to do this. Turned out, Sunday nights was the worst time to do it. You spent all weekend worrying about all the things you think you needed to do next week and it felt like Sunday night was the beginning of your working week. Plus, it can be very hard to motivate yourself to get up and go to a quiet room to do some planning when you are fully relaxed. Friday afternoons looked promising, but I found I was tired and just wanted to get home. I found the best time to do the weekly...

Podcast 264 This week, The question is all about implementing the Time Sector System using a paper-based method. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 264 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 264 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. There’s something special about pen and paper. The feel of the pen moving on paper and the simplicity of collecting notes, ideas and even marking off tasks feels better than tapping your mouse or trackpad on a task. Sadly, technology has made task and appointment management extremely convenient. It’s fast and easy to add and check off tasks and it’s far easier to carry a phone than to always having to make sure you carry a notebook with you. While I love technology and the convenience it brings with it, I do miss being able to slow things down and handwrite notes, ideas and lists of things I want to do and it seems many other people also prefer the more naturalness of using pen and paper to manage their lives. So, wit that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Max. Max asks; Hi Carl, The problem for me lies in the tools. Before coming across your work, I used a paper notebook and generally followed the Bullet Journal methodology. I have found that I do not enjoy using digital tools for organising, note-taking and general brainstorming. Something about moving a pen across paper just works for me. How would you implement your Time Sector system with a paper notebook and a pen? Hi Max, thank you for your question. One of the benefits of using a digital system is that all your repeatable routines and areas of focus tasks automatically show up in your list of tasks to do today. These will need to be manually transferred to your today list when you do your planning with a paper based system. The good news here is, if you do a daily planning session, you can pull your recurring tasks from your routines and areas of focus lists and add them to your list of tasks for tomorrow. This gives you the opportunity to decide whether you can do those tasks for tomorrow. This would likely mean you will be copying five or six tasks each day from a master list to your daily list. Personally, I like this as it forces you to deliberately consider what you will do today. However, to make this more concrete, so you don’t miss anything, I would create a page divided into seven boxes. Each box represents a day of the week, and you can add your recurring tasks in there. For monthly and yearly recurring tasks, I would put them on your calendar. As you are only doing this with your monthly and yearly recurring tasks, it won’t overwhelm your calendar. Okay, aside from that, the Time Sector System works very well through a paper based system. In all task management systems whether they are digital or not, the most important list is your today list. The key with this list is it is curated, relevant and up to date will all the excess removed. This is one of the disadvantages of the digital system. Because it is so easy to add a date to a task and then “forget” about it—the date and forget problem—we add random dates to tasks and then our daily lists become swamped before we even start the day. The paper based system avoids this because for you to create a daily list you manually need to add tasks to it. So, what about the folders? Well here I would create a This Week...

Podcast 263. This week, we are looking at the humble task manager and at how to get the most out of it by getting back to basics. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 263 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 263 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. Since even before the Ivy Lee Method was first used in 1918, listing out your tasks for the day has been a common way to manage all the things you have to do. Externalising what needs to be done, is a tried and tested method for managing what we do each day. When you combine a well managed task manager with a calendar, you have a very powerful way to get your work done and to have time for rest each day. Now, as usual we humans are incredibly destructive. For some weird reason we seem to hate simplicity and love to over complicate things until they are destroyed. A classic apocryphal story that illustrates this is during the space race, both NASA and the Russians were having difficulty finding a writing implement that worked in a zero gravity environment. The traditional pen needs gravity to work and when you take gravity out, the pen will no longer work. NASA spent millions of dollars researching this. Yet the Russians spent nothing and solved the problem. The Russian space agency gave their astronauts pencils. Pencils don’t need gravity. This week’s question touches on this problem of over-complexity and I will give you some ways to get things back to a more simple footing so you can focus more on doing your work and spend less time organising your work. 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 Thomas. Thomas asks; Hi Carl, I’ve recently been watching a lot of YouTube videos on using task managers. I like the idea of keeping all my tasks in one place, but it’s so confusing. There’s so many different ways to use a to-do list I just cannot figure out which is the best one. Do you have any recommendations? Hi Thomas, thank you for your question and yes, you are right; it is very confusing. The problem here is everyone will have a different way to manage their work. This is in part because we are all different (which is a good thing), and we all do different types of work. While you might have a generic job title such as a doctor or dentist within those generic titles there are a multitude of different disciplines. Another problem is we now have many more options than using a piece of paper and a pen to write out what needs to be done today. Now the task manager has been digitalised, developers can add features to differentiate themselves from other developers building task managers. It a combination of these two factor that has inevitably led to things becoming overly complicated. But let’s just push back the complexity and look at what a task manager needs to do. A task manager needs three areas: An area to collect things, an area to store things and an area that tells you what needs to be done today. Anything else that adds to that is just adding complexity. Now task manager developers can easily create something with those three areas that works well. Unfortunately, for us, that would be boring and so we now have flags, tags and filters (and a whole lot more in many cases) Now these can be useful, but they are definitely not essential. So, how can you make a task manager work effectively? Well,...

This week’s question is all about building success into your life and why to do it, you need to become boring. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 262 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 262 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. It’s strange how themes crop up and then suddenly I see the theme everywhere. This week, that theme has been all about how to turn something into a success and why so many people fail. It’s sad that the media only show the fruits of success—showcasing expensive houses, exotic holidays and flashy cars. That may be the results of living a successful life, but it is not how you become successful. The way success is trailed would make anyone feel that only a lucky few can ever be successful, yet that is simply not true at all. Success has nothing to do with where you were born, what school or university you went to, whether you have wealthy parents or were lucky enough to win the lottery. Success has nothing to do with genetics or background. Whether you succeed or not depends entirely on the choices you make and how you define success. When I see so called instagram influencers living it up on expensive looking yachts or standing at the steps of a private jet, I turn off. I do not see that as success—that’s showing off. Success should be measured by you and what you achieve and ultimately what you contribute to this amazing world. So, before we get to this week’s question, just pause for a minute an ask yourself what you would have to achieve in order for you to consider yourself a success? That could be to complete a full course marathon, to raise your children to be respectful of others or it could be to solve a global problem. However you define success, that needs to be your starting point. If you don’t know what that is, you will have no information on which to build a strategy. Okay, enough of my rambling introduction, let me know hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Roger. Roger asks: Hi Carl, I recently took your PACT course, and was curious to know if you still follow those ideas and whether you would add anything to the cours e today. Hi Roger, than you for your question. Okay, before we start, I should explain to those who don’t know, I have a free course in my Learning Centre called PACT. PACT stands for; Patience, Action, Consistency and Time. It’s a course that gives you a framework to achieving success at anything. In the course, I used building a blog, podcast or YouTube channel as examples, but you could apply to principles to anything and you will be successful. I’m willing to guarantee that. However, one thing I know is 95% of the people who set out to succeed at something will fail. Why is that? It’s because to become successful at anything you need to become boring. You will also likely have to ditch quite a few of your friends and stop seeing some of your family members as well. It’s this sacrifice that most people are unwilling to make. Now, if you have read Napoleon Hill’s brilliant book Think And Grow Rich, you will know about “Burning Desire”. It’s this burning desire that Napoleon Hill discovered was the common denominator among the thousands of highly successful people he interviewed for the book. They knew exactly what they wanted to achieve and set about single-mindedly to achieve it. The excluded everything from their lives...

This week’s question is all about getting the most out of your calendar. The most powerful tool in your productivity toolbox, yet surprisingly the least spoken about. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Ultimate Productivity Workshop Email Mastery Course The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 261 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 261 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. The humble calendar has been around for a very long time. And there are many iterations too. There are seasonal calendars still used by many farmers to the little electronic calendars on our phones. It always strikes me as odd that when you do a search for productivity apps, all you get are task managers and notes apps. Yet, if you don’t take control of your calendar, you will always be running out of time, missing meetings and chasing the elusive goal of being “finished”. It’s your calendar that will never lie to you. It gives you the twenty-four hours you have each day and you get to design how you use those twenty-four hours. In my opinion, your calendar beats all other productivity tools and apps because it’s the only tool you have that will tell you where you need to be, when and with whom. Now, just before I hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice, I just want to give you a heads up that there are still a few places left for February’s Ultimate Productivity Workshop. Beginning on Friday 3rd February, and for the following three Fridays, I will be doing a ninety minute workshop that takes you through the process of building your very own productivity system—a system that works for you. We will start with the calendar, then go on your task manager and managing your communications—email and messages and end by bringing everything together. This is a wonderful opportunity to join a group of likeminded people who together will help you to overcome any obstacles you may have and to bring in some solid practices that will serve you over the years to come. The focus of this workshop is on you. I want you to bring your productivity and time management issues so we get real life experiences and to develop methods and processes to ease these issues so they no longer create a bottleneck or obstacle to taking control of your time and you life. I hope you can join me. I’m so excited to being able to help you and others build their Ultimate Productivity System. Full details for this event are in the show notes. Okay, now 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 Lisa. Lisa asks, Hi Carl, I’ve see a few of your videos on how you use your calendar, and was wondering if you have any tips for someone who works in a typical office and struggles to find time to get on and do my regular work in between a lot of meetings and interruptions. Hi Lisa, than you for your question. I think we need to address the elephant in the room first. Allowing your calendar to show you are more available than you really are. For many of you working in an office environment where your boss and colleagues can see your calendar—or at least when you have availability—it can be hell trying to organise your day. When your boss or colleague is attempting to set up a meeting, they are not concerned with how much work you have to do, they just want to schedule a meeting and ultimately the day and time will be set according to when everyone is available. This...

This week’s question is about all those little secrets I’ve discovered over the years that make getting work done on time, every time, easy. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Email Mastery Course The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 259 | Script Hello, and welcome to episode 260 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 years, I’ve picked up a few tips and tricks that have adopted have helped me to fine-tune my system and greatly improve my overall effectiveness and productivity. This week’s question asked me directly about some of my lesser-known secrets. It was an interesting question because many of the things I do each day I’ve absorbed into my system and never really think about it anymore. It’s a little like learning to drive a car. At first, you have to consciously remember to put the key in the ignition, or to put your foot on the brake and press the start button; after a while, those steps are done unconsciously. And BOOM! I’ve just given you the first tip, and I haven’t even revealed the question. The secret to mastering productivity or anything else is repetition. However, before I explain that a little more, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Craig. Craig asks, Hi Carl, I’ve followed you for a while now, and I have always wondered, beyond what you share through your YouTube and blog if there are any other little nuggets you use every day that you haven’t revealed in some form or another? Hi Craig, good question. I’ve never thought of that before. I’m sure there are things I do do every day that I do unconsciously that help my overall productivity. You set me quite a challenge here. Well, let me return to what I was saying in the introduction. “The mother of mastery is repetition”. The more you do something, the better and faster you will get at it. Take, for example, the humble weekly planning session. When you first do one, it will take you a long time. There are a lot of things you need to go through for the first time, and you will have to consciously think about what you are looking at and will likely read through everything. Over time though, you learn what needs looking at and what can be skipped. If you come from a GTD background, you will feel you must go through all your open projects. And again, if you are a GTDer, pretty much everything you want to do will be a project—the anything involving two or more steps being a project idea. That means you are going to have to go through hundreds of projects each and every week. Good luck with that one, my friends. Now a more pragmatic way of doing your weekly planning session is to look through only your active projects. And here, you really only need to ask yourself what needs to happen next and when do I need to do it. This dramatically reduces the amount of time you need for a weekly planning session, and as you get consistent with it, i.e. you do one every week, you know exactly what needs looking at. It just becomes natural. You know where to start, and that triggers everything else. Incidentally linked to your weekly planning session is timing. When should you do yours? Now, over the years, I’ve tried all sorts of different times. I discovered the worst time to do your weekly planning is Sunday night. Yes, I know many of will be shouting at whatever device you are listening to this on. But bear with me. Doing your weekly...

This week’s question is on how to reduce the number of tasks in your task manager. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Email Mastery Course The Time Blocking Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 259 | Script Hello, and welcome to episode 259 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. We’ve all face this problem. Getting tasks into our task manager, adding dates and then discovering that we have far too many tasks to complete on a given day. It’s problematic because we feel once a date is added, it must be done on that day. The truth is, most of the tasks on your list for today do not need to be done today. They could be done tomorrow or the day after, and nothing would go disastrously wrong. Yet, the task being on your list today leaves you feeling it has to be done today. In many ways, this is a symptom of becoming better organised and more productive. It’s not the disaster many feel it is, just a growing pain and one that, with a little strategic thinking, can be overcome. So, today, that’s what I will do. I will share with you a number of tips and methods that will help you to overcome this feeling of overwhelm and the need to do everything on your list each day. 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 Philip. Philip asks; Hi Carl, I’m having a big problem with my daily tasks. No matter how hard I try, I never complete my tasks for the day, and it causes me to feel deflated and disillusioned. I keep trying different task managers, and that does help for a week or two, but after that, I find myself in the same problem. How do you stay on top of your tasks every day? Hi Philip, thank you for your great question. And don’t worry. You are definitely not alone with this problem. The first thing to understand is if you are following the Time Sector System, the focus is not necessarily on what you do each day; the focus is on what you get accomplished in the week. This is why the most important folder you have in the Time Sector System is the This Week folder. This is where you put all the tasks you want to complete this week. All the other folders are just holding pens for tasks you have not yet decided when you will do. And that’s okay. When you stop focusing on daily task numbers and instead focus on what you will accomplish in the week, if you get to the end of Monday and you still have several tasks to complete, you can relax and simply reschedule the remaining tasks for another day in the week. Now, there will inevitably be tasks that need to be done on a given day. For those tasks, you use the 2+8 prioritisation method—where two of your ten most important tasks must be completed that day. (Even if you have to pull an all-nighter to do it—which hopefully doesn’t ever happen, but that’s the mindset you want to have) You can utilise the power of time blocking and block out sufficient time to make sure you get those two tasks completed for the day. For instance, this week, on Tuesday, I had a two-hour block of time for writing. On my task list, I had this podcast script to write as a priority task. Hence, I wrote this script in that two-hour block of time. When I did my planning for the day on Monday evening, I saw the task, and I saw I had a writing time block. I made writing the script a priority task and went to bed knowing I had sufficient time to write the script. Linked to this, there are a couple of...