The Working With... Podcast

If your notes are a disorganised mess, this episode is the one for you. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Mastering Your Digital Notes Organisation Course. Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 321 Hello, and welcome to episode 321 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. This week, I have a special episode for you. No question; instead, I want to share a way to think about your productivity tools, particularly how your notes app fits into the whole scheme of things. There is a trinity of productivity tools—your calendar, task manager, and notes app—that when connected, will enhance your overall effectiveness by reducing the friction between organising and doing work. Today, I want to focus on the notes app because this is the tool that is most often neglected. Within this Trinity of tools, your calendar is number 1. Everything flows from your calendar because that is the tool that will prevent you from being overly ambitious and give you the reality of the day. There are twenty-four boxes in your calendar, each representing an hour, and that’s all you get each day. You cannot change that, for time is the fixed part of your productivity system. Your task manager tells you what tasks you have committed to and when you will do those tasks. Its relationship with your calendar is critical because if you have seven hours of meetings, you’re committed to picking your kids up from school, and you have a hundred tasks to do; you will know instantly you have an impossible day. You can then either reschedule some meetings or reduce your task number. So, where do your notes come into this trinity? Your notes support your tasks. It’s here where you will manage your projects, interests, goals and areas of focus. It’s also where you can keep your archive, which, if used well, will become a rich resource of inspiration, ideas and creativity. But more on that later. Of all the productivity tools you use, your notes app is the one where you can be a little relaxed. Your notes do not need to be perfectly curated and organised. Most notes apps today have powerful search built in, and I would argue that the ability to search within your notes is a critical part of your choice when choosing a notes app. I suspect Evernote’s popularity over the years (despite its recent changes) is due to two factors: its search, which is arguably still the best in the field, and its brilliant web clipper. The ability to search your notes means that as long as you give any note a sufficiently descriptive title, you will be able to find it quickly and effortlessly. As a side note, I highly recommend that you learn all the different ways your notes app can search for your notes. Just Google your notes app of choice’s search functions. For instance, you can search “OneNote search” or “Notion search”. Learning this will save you a lot of time in the future. Evernote has a keyboard shortcut on the Mac operating system that I’ve been using for years. However, for a brief period in 2019, this feature stopped working while Evernote was transitioning from the old “legacy” version to the new Evernote 10, which was very frustrating. During that six-month period, I realised how important it was to be able to search your notes quickly in terms of overall productivity. Your notes do not just support your projects. They can also support multiple parts of your life, from tracking your goals to keeping your eight areas of focus front and centre of your life. Moreover, you can keep track of your hobbies, wish lists,...

Setting up a structured day makes sense. It reduces decision-making and helps you prioritise your work. But how strict should you be with this structure? That’s the question I answer this week. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 320 Hello, and welcome to episode 320 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. The change that has given me the biggest productivity benefit over the years was giving my calendar priority over every other productivity tool. This means that if my calendar tells me it’s time to buckle down and do some focused work, I will do that. If a customer or boss asks for a meeting when I have scheduled time to work on a project, I will always suggest an alternative time. This single change has meant I get all my work done (with time to spare), I can plan my days and weeks with a reasonable amount of confidence, and I rarely, if ever, get backlogs. However, when you adopt this method, the temptation is to adhere to it rigidly. And that is where things begin to go wrong. This week’s question is on this very question. How strict should you be with the plan you have for the week? So, with that said, literally, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Lucas. Lucas asks, hi Carl, I love your idea of blocking time out for your core work each week. The problem I have is I feel guilty now whenever I ignore a message or refuse to meet someone when I have a time block. What do you do to overcome this feeling of guilt? Hi Lucas, thank you for your question. Having structure in your day (and week) lets you know with a strong degree of confidence that you have sufficient time each day to do your work. Let me give you an example. Pretty much all of us get email each day. It’s just one of those inevitable parts of life. Now, if you are a typical knowledge worker, you will be getting upwards of 80 emails each day. Let’s say, of those 80 emails, half of them are non-actionable, 10 of them are for reference, and the remaining emails (thirty) require a response of some sort from you. How long will it take for you to respond to thirty emails? An hour? An hour-and-a-half? However, how long it will take you is rather less important. What matters is that at some point in the day, you will need to deal with those emails. If you don’t allocate some time, you will require double the amount of time tomorrow because you will have to deal with all the emails you didn’t deal with today. That’s how backlogs build: by being unrealistic about the amount of time you need to protect to stay on top of things like email and your admin. It would be easy for me to sit here and tell you to find an hour a day and dedicate it to responding to your emails. In theory, this sounds great. In practice, life will get in the way. It always does. And even if life doesn’t get in the way, you may be exhausted, or something could be worrying you. All of which will conspire to slow you down and make you less efficient. Instead of strictly sticking to a plan, you will find it better to work on the principle that one is greater than zero. In other words, while you may like to have an hour to manage your emails, on those days that you don’t, give yourself twenty or thirty minutes instead. The goal is not necessarily to clear your actionable email each day. The goal is to stay on top of it. This means that if you are unable to clear all your actionable emails today when you come to deal with your email tomorrow,...

So, your calendar and task manager are organised, and you have enough time to complete your important work. But how do you define what your individual tasks are? That’s what I’m answering this week. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 319 Hello, and welcome to episode 319 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. One of the most powerful ways to improve your effectiveness is to ensure you have sufficient time each day protected for your important work. Some of these tasks will be obvious. If you’re a salesperson and one of your customers asks you to send them a quote for a new product you are selling, that will come under the general category of “customers”. As this is an important part of your work as a salesperson, your “customer” category will have time protected each day. Well, I hope it does. Then there will be your general communications and admin to deal with. We all have these categories of tasks to do each day. There’s no point in sticking your head in the sand, as it were, and hoping they will go away. Emails demanding a reply do not disappear. Ignore these for one day, and you’ll have double the amount to do tomorrow. This means you will need double the amount of time, too—time you likely do not have. What this all means is that if your task manager supports tags or labels (and most do), you can use these for your categories. This week’s question is about how you choose which category for your tasks. So, with that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from José. José asks, Hi Carl, I am struggling to define which tasks are admin, consulting, or sales-related. How do you go about choosing categories for your tasks? Hi José, thank you for your question. Let me first explain the different categories of work you may have. The concept here is that every task you have will come under a particular category. Those categories could be communications or admin, but they could also be sales activity, writing, designing, or marketing. Your categories will depend on the kind of work you do. Once you have established your categories, you protect time each day (or week) to work on those categories. For example, I have a category for “projects.” I block Wednesday mornings for project work. This means that when I plan for the week, the majority of my project tasks will be scheduled for Wednesday. The important thing is you do not add too many categories. The less, the better. To give you a benchmark, I have eight categories. Mine are: Writing Audio/visual Clients Projects Communications Admin Planning Chores It can be difficult to establish your categories at first, and the temptation will be to add more categories than you need. This is a mistake because very soon, you will have too many categories, which slows down your processing. If you’re familiar with COD (and if you are not, you can take the free course—the link is in the show notes), the purpose of Organising is to get everything in the right place as quickly as possible. If you have too many categories, it will slow you down and involve far too many choices. You may experience the paradox of choice, where too much choice paralyses your thinking. So, what are your categories? Well, you will likely have communications and admin. We all have to communicate, and email and Teams/Slack are pernicious and never-ending. Having some time protected each day to deal with your communications will keep you on top of...

This week, it’s COD week. In a special episode, I’ll walk you through the fundamentals of what all solid productivity and time management systems have. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 318 Hello, and welcome to episode 318 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. Now, some of you may be wondering what COD means. Well, it’s not a type of fish. COD stands for Collect, Organise, and Do, and these three parts of a productivity system are the critical foundations you need to develop if you want your system to work effortlessly. COD came about several years ago following a research project I did. In it, I went back to 1960 (not literally) and looked at all the time management and productivity systems I could find to see if there were any common denominators. There were multiple systems and approaches, from Hyrum Smith’s Franklin Planner system to Stephen Covey’s First Things First and Jim Rohn’s notebook and planning method. And, of course, I didn’t neglect to look at GTD (Getting Things Done) and the multiple variations that came from that. There were four standout features of all these systems. The first was to collect everything into a trusted place. The second was to organise or process what you collected. The third was to plan the day, and finally, there was doing the work. When I developed COD, I wanted to give you a simple framework on which to build your own system. A system based on how you prefer to do your work. Many of you will like routine, others perhaps like flexibility. What COD does is give you a three-step process you can customise to work in the way you want to work. Let me begin with collecting. Nothing will work if you don’t collect whatever comes your way in a trusted place. Here, there are two key parts. Collect everything and put it somewhere you trust you will see later in the day. Scribbling tasks and ideas onto PostIt notes can work, but I have observed that they often get stuck on computer monitors, whiteboards, and many other places, which means you don’t trust that you will see them later in the day. What works best is having a central place for all these tasks, appointments, and ideas. That could be a task manager on your phone and computer or a pocket notebook you carry with you everywhere you go. What matters is you use it consistently, and you trust it. This may mean you need to practice to develop the right habits. But this practice is well worth it. The second thing about your collecting tool (or UCT, as I call it, Universal Collecting Tool) is that it should be fast. If there are too many buttons to press or you keep a notebook in your bag and you have to retrieve your bag to get your notebook, you will resist and start to believe you will remember whatever you were going to collect in your head. And that will never serve you. It will forget to remind you to add it to your inbox. The second part of the process is organising what you collected. Here, you want to choose something that works for you. I recommend using the Time Sector System, but you may find organising things by project works better for you. What matters when it comes to organising is that you can quickly organise what you collected that day into their appropriate places. For instance, a task would go into your task manager, an event would go to your calendar, and an idea would go into your notes app. Where you put them will depend on how you have each of these tools set up. With your task manager, what matters is the things you...

Do you feel your digital notes are not giving you what you want? And, is there a right and wrong way to manage all these notes? That’s what we are looking at today. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 317 Hello, and welcome to episode 317 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. Over the last few years, there’s been a lot of discussion around how we manage our digital notes. There have been hundreds, if not thousands of new notes apps promising to do wonderful things for us and there have been numerous ways to organise all these notes from Tiago Forte’s PARA and the Second Brain to the Zettelkasten system. The question is do any of these apps and systems work? I feel qualified to answer this question as I have been down every rabbit hole possible when it comes to digital notes. I’ve tried Michael Hyatt’s Evernote tagging system, Tiago’s PARA and I even developed my own system, GAPRA. But, ultimately do any of these work ? And asking that question; do any of these systems give you what you need? Perhaps is the right place to start. What do you want from a notes app? What do you want to see and how? Before we get to the answers here, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Susan. Susan asks, Hi Carl, I’m having difficulties trying to understand how best to use Evernote. I just do not know how to organise my notes. I have thousands of notes in there going back at least five years and it’s a mess. Do you have any suggestions on how best to clean all these notes up? Hi Susan, thank you for your question. I don’t think you are alone. The popularity of books like Building A Second Brain and the number of YouTube videos on this subject suggests many people are struggling to know how best to organise their digital notes. But, I wonder if what we are doing is over-complicating something that should be very simple. I’ve recently been reading Walter Isaacson’s brilliant biography of Leonardo Da Vinci and on the chapter about his notebooks Isaacson points out that Leonardo Da Vinci instilled the habit of carrying around a notebook into all is students and apprentices. It was something Leonardo did himself and everything he collected, wrote and sketched was random in order. We are very fortunate that many of these notebooks survive today and what we get to see is the complete randomness of what he collected. In these notebooks there are designs, sketches, thoughts and to-do lists all on the same page. It was this randomness that led to Leonardo discovering new ways to connect ideas to solve difficult problems and to paint in a way no one else had ever done. And, I think, this is where we have gone wrong with our digital notes. It’s the randomness of your notes that will lead you to discover new ways of doing things. It will help you to be more creative and help you develop your ideas. If you try and strictly organise your notes—something a digital notes app will do—you lose those random connections. Everything will be organised by topic, thought or idea. That does not mean that you want complete randomness. There will be projects, goals and areas of interest that you will want to keep together. A large project works best when all related notes, emails and thoughts are kept together. After all, they are connected by a common desired outcome. This is where your digital notes will excel—everything together in one place. This is why having a project...

This week, I’m answering a question about the basics of building your very own 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 Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 316 Hello, and welcome to episode 316 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. Do you ever feel there is too much conflicting advice on productivity and time management? There are those who tell you never to look at your email first thing in the morning and others who do (me included). Then there are those who advocate time blocking and many who don’t. And there are the proponents of the Getting Things Done system or, as I discovered recently, people who swear by their Franklin Planners. It’s a confusing landscape, yet if you look at almost any way of doing things, there will always be conflicting advice. That’s because humans have different ways of doing things and varied tastes. There are those who say a stick-shift car is better than an automatic; others will give you different advice on how to raise your children. So, how do you navigate all the advice on time management and productivity? That’s what we’re looking at this week. This week’s question comes from Meg. Meg asks, Hi Carl, I’m a recent convert to your YouTube channel, and I wanted to ask if you have any recommendations for time management systems. There’s a lot of different advice, and I just want something I can use and stick to. Hi Meg, thank you for your question. I’ve always felt when it comes to time management and, by extension, productivity, the best place to start is with what you want to know and when. By this, I mean, what do you want to see on your calendar, and when do you want to see it? You can set up notifications on your calendar to alert you to upcoming events, and you can choose when those notifications appear. For instance, if you work from home, perhaps you may only need a fifteen-minute alert before a meeting. If you work in an office or travel to meet clients, you may prefer to see when your next appointment is thirty minutes or an hour before. Getting fundamentals like this right for you would be a great place to begin. Next would be how you manage your calendars. You will likely have a work and personal calendar. I know many people also have shared calendars with their families. The question here is how you want to be able to see all these calendars. Separating them by keeping your work calendar only on your work devices and your personal calendars on your personal devices can give you a nice clean edge between your work and personal life but can also create conflicts. If you were sent on a one-day training course, you may need to leave home a little early to arrive at the training site. If you were also committed to taking your kids to school on that day without seeing them all on the same calendar, it would be easy to double-book yourself. Think of it this way: you live one life, not multiple. Yes, you may have different roles in your life—a parent, a brother or sister, a son or daughter and an employee, for instance, but all those roles are just a part of your one life. When thought of that way, would it not make sense to keep that one life on one calendar? You could separate your roles by creating different calendars within your calendar app. Each role could be allocated a different colour on a single calendar. This way, you would see everything on one calendar and easily manage conflicts, such as attending a training course and taking your kids to...

This week’s question is all about how I use the technology I have to be more productive and better manage my time. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 315 Hello, and welcome to episode 315 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. There’s a lot of technology today that helps us be more productive. Our computers make producing work easy compared to twenty-five years ago. It’s also made producing some kinds of work a lot cheaper. Imagine the cost of studio time if you wanted to record an album in 1999. Today, all you need is a laptop and a microphone, and you are good to go. However, with all that wonderful technology, it’s likely we have a lot of devices lying around gathering dust. I have a camera with four or five lenses sitting in a gorgeous canvas camera bag I haven’t used in over five years. Now, all I take with me when we go on a trip is my phone. I’m not a professional photographer; I don’t need all that equipment. And don’t get me started on all the apps I find I need to purge every once in a while because I don’t use them anymore. Then, there are all the subscriptions you may be paying for that you are not using. As an example, I recently discovered I had a Fantastical subscription. I used to use Fantastical. It was a cool calendar app that allowed me to have all my Todoist tasks and events in one place. Shortly after seeing what that did to my calendar, I stopped that integration (it was horrible. It made it look like I had no time at all for anything but work and meetings). Why was I paying for a service I was not using? I don’t know, but it did cause me to go through all my app subscriptions to see if there were any more. (I found four more services I was paying for I was no longer using). This week’s question addresses the heart of this technology overwhelm, so let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice. This week’s question comes from Mark. Mark asks, hi Carl, I was wondering what digital tools you use to get your work done. You seem to be using a lot of tools, and I thought it must be very confusing to decide what to use. Hi Mark, thank you for your question. I remember hearing an interview with Craig Federighi in which he explained Apple’s thinking on its products. He talked about how sometimes you work on your laptop, and other times, you may find the environment more suitable for an iPad. A good example of this would be when working at your desk, you may prefer the laptop, and if you attended a meeting, the form factor and mobility of an iPad might work better. It certainly did for me when I was teaching. I would create all my teaching materials from my computer, but when I went to the classroom I took only my iPad. That was all I needed to teach with. Today, I no longer teach in classrooms; I work from home. However, I do like to step away from my desk and work somewhere else occasionally, and when I do that, I will only take my iPad with me. It’s great for writing and fits nicely into a small shoulder bag I carry when I go out. But let’s look at how I use each individual device, and I will explain why. My phone is always with me, which means it’s the perfect UCT (Universal Collection Tool). I have my phone set up so I can quickly collect tasks, ideas and articles I would like to read later. I use Drafts, an amazing little app that connects with Todoist and Evernote. With Evernote, I have it set up so that if I have a blog post or YouTube video idea, I can send it directly to...

What can you do when your calendar’s full, your task manager is bulging at the seams, and you find yourself stuck with nowhere to turn? That’s what we are looking at today. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 314 Hello, and welcome to episode 314 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. Do you feel, or often feel, that no matter what you do, there is always too much to do? Hundreds of emails that need responding to, several projects all coming to a close at the same time, and a demanding personal life? It’s a horrible feeling, isn’t it? It feels like there’s no room to move or do anything you want to do. Turn up each day, and the noise destroys your energy, willpower and sense of being human—the “rinse and repeat” approach to life. It leaves you exhausted at the end of the day, yet with a feeling you got nothing important done. The good news is all is not lost, but you are going to have to do something that every instinct in your body will tell you can’t do. Yet, if you do not do anything, these miserable days will continue forever. Those who have managed to drag themselves out of that pit of despair have had to do something that was uncomfortable yet brought them the organisation and calm they were looking for. The good news is the action you need to take is not so dramatic that you need to quit your job. In fact, once you commit to taking action it can be a lot of fun. (No, really!) So, with all that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Anthony. Anthony asks, Hi Carl, Can you help? I am completely overwhelmed with emails and tasks. I have three deadlines coming up at the end of this month, and I am so far behind I know I will miss those deadlines. How does anyone stay on top of their work? Hi Anthony, Thank you for your question, and I hope you had time to renegotiate your deadlines before the end of February. Okay, where to start? When anyone finds themselves caught in a spiral of never-ending tasks, emails and projects, there is only one thing you can do, and that is to stop. And this is the part every instinct in your body will scream NO! I don’t have time. You are right in one respect; you don’t have time, but then you don’t have time to do your work either, do you? So, really, there’s nothing to lose by stopping altogether. Let me explain why stopping altogether, at least for a couple of days, is the best thing you can do. A lot of what you have accumulated likely does not need doing, but it is swirling around in your head or in your task manager telling you it does need doing. It’s only when you stop, step back and look at everything as a whole that you begin to see what needs doing and what likely does not. You won’t see that unless you stop. Let’s take email as an example. At what point will responding to an email become embarrassing for you? A week, two weeks, a month or three months? If you have not replied to an email after three weeks, do you think the person who sent the email to you is still waiting, or do they even remember sending you the email in the first place? Where is your line? You see, there is a professional consideration here. If you have not responded to an email for three weeks, what do you think the sender will feel about you if they get a reply now? Unprofessional? Disorganised? A mess? The thing is, if you have failed to respond to an email for three or more weeks often the best thing you can...

Where does technology help, and where does it hinder your productivity? That’s what we’ll be exploring in this week’s episode. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 313 Hello, and welcome to episode 313 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show. Over the last ten years or so, there’s been an explosion in the world of productivity technology. Prior to around 2010, most of our technology use was to create documents and presentations and send and reply to emails. We were in control, and technology served us. Today, technology is creeping more and more into our lives. Now, you can use apps that will look at your task manager and your calendar and tell you when to work on what. Microsoft Outlook suggests times for focused work (not taking a walk or a rest, I notice), and many developers are promising more and more automation. The thing is do we really need that? When it comes to time management and productivity, I believe it’s important to retain control. My calendar or task manager telling me to work on the report when I feel exhausted is only going to leave me feeling guilty if I do what’s best for me—taking a rest. Now, don’t get me wrong here. I think technology is great, and one of my favourite features of Spotify and Apple Music is how these apps use my listening history to create random playlists. I love playing those playlists. I like how YouTube serves up recommendations, again, based on my watch history. This is useful. I find documentaries I would otherwise have missed. However, I get to choose what to watch and when. I was reminded of this recently with the sad death of BBC Radio 2’s DJ, Steve Wright. I was able to open YouTube and type in Steve’s name and was able to listen to some of his most iconic moments. I discovered long-lost recordings of him—stuff I would never have been able to find ten years ago. These are some examples of where technology works and enhances our lives. But (and there are many buts here) that nicely leads me to this week’s question. Which means, it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Scott. Scott asks, hi Carl, what do you think of apps like Motion and others that will organise your appointments and tasks for you so you no longer need to do any planning? Hi Scott, thank you for your question. Let’s look at where technology has an advantage. Communications. Digital communications are brilliant. They are instant, and because of that, the number of phone call interruptions has significantly reduced over the years. Phone call interruptions are the worst, aren’t they? Your phone rings, and it’s like an alarm call that we feel obligated to answer. We have no idea what the caller is calling about or how long it will take, and that creates its own anxieties. Today, I can see who’s calling and can decide whether to answer or not. I can also put my phone on silent so I don’t get that horrendous shock when the phone rings. And I know a lot of you may have a downer on email, but compared to what we had thirty years ago, it’s far better. And, no, we are not getting more emails than letters. It’s about the same. The difference is with letters, we did not feel they had to be replied to instantly, and we could take our time. Although, as an aside, in the past, large companies employed people to work in the mail room. These wonderful people’s job was to sort the mail, so you only got the correspondence that...

How important is your calendar in your productivity toolbox? I would argue that it’s the most important tool you have and the key to finally getting control of your time. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 312 Hello, and welcome to episode 312 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show. Reading the comments on some of my YouTube videos, I see a lot of people trying to make their task manager their primary productivity tool. I would argue this is a mistake. A to-do list or task manager is, at its heart, a list of things you think you need to do. And no matter what you throw at it, your task manager will willingly accept it. And that is exactly what it should do. Make it fantastically easy to collect stuff. However, after you have collected stuff, what next? It doesn’t matter whether you have fifty, a hundred or a thousand tasks in your task manager. What matters is when you will do those tasks. There’s no limit on what you want or need to do; that’s infinite. Your limitation comes from time. You only get twenty-four hours a day to do all this stuff, and somewhere in those twenty-four hours, you’ll need to sleep, eat and wash. Given that the limitation on what you can get done each day is time, that means that the primary tool in your productivity toolbox is always going to be your calendar. So, with that introduction complete, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Pablo. Pablo asks, hi Carl, I noticed that you seem to be very careful about what you put on your calendar. It looks so clean. How do you keep it looking like that? Hi Pablo, thank you for your question. Your observation is correct. I am very protective of my calendar. To me, knowing where my commitments are and where I have space is important each day. It allows me to control my day and to ensure I am not pushing myself beyond my healthy limits. I have an unhealthy fascination with the routines of highly successful people. It’s always interested me to learn how immensely productive people manage to get their work done. I’ve learned about Winston Churchill’s afternoon naps and late-night writing. Of Leonardo Da Vinci’s polyphasic sleeping, Maya Angelou’s hotel writing room and Albert Einstein’s love of sleep. One thing these incredible people had in common was their understanding that to get work done, you needed to protect time. Painter Picasso hated interruptions and would go to great lengths to protect his painting time. Maya Angelou would hide herself away in a hotel room between 7:00 am and 3:00 pm to do her writing and thinking. Ian Fleming screamed at anyone who dared to interrupt his 9:00 am to 12:00 pm writing time. I find it strange that so many people want to become better at managing their time and get more work done yet refuse to take any action to achieve that goal. It’s not the tool that will do the work for you—only you can do that—it’s carving out the time you need to do it. And that’s where your calendar becomes your most powerful tool. It’s the only productivity tool that will never lie to you. You get a new twenty-four-hour canvas each day, and you are given the freedom to create any kind of day you wish. You could choose to call in sick and stay in bed all day if you wished. However, you will then need to deal with the feelings of guilt and FOMO that inevitably come when you do something like this. Every decision you make has consequences. I recently did...

Do pen and paper have any role in your productivity system these days? If not, you might be missing out on something very special. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 311 Hello, and welcome to episode 311 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show. A few weeks ago, I posted a video on YouTube that demonstrated how I have gone back to using a pen—or rather, a few of my old fountain pens—and some paper to start planning a project. I’ve since added doing my weekly planning on paper too. This video and a subsequent follow-up video garnered a lot of interest and some fantastic questions. It also goes back to a question I was asked on this podcast last year on whether it was possible to create an analogue version of the Time Sector System. This week’s question is a follow-up to that question, and I hope my answer will encourage you to explore some of the unique ways the humble pen and paper can aid in your productivity journey. So, with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Tom. Tom asks, hi, Carl, I recently saw your video on going back to pen and paper. What was your thinking behind that decision? Hi Tom, thank you for your question. In many ways, the reason for the “experiment” was something I tried when I was flying over to Ireland for the Christmas break. I decided to take a pen and notebook with me to see if my planning and thoughts would flow better on paper rather than how I usually do it through a keyboard. The idea came from a video I had seen with Tim Ferriss, where he discussed how he finds his ideas flow better when he puts pen to paper. Plus, I have seen Robin Sharma, Tony Robbins, Andrew Huberman and read about many historical figures such as Presidents Kennedy and Nixon as well as Winston Churchill, Ian Fleming and Charles Darwin all take copious notes on paper. I wondered if there was something in it. When you think about it, the chances are you spend far too long in from of a screen these days. If it’s not your computer, it’s going to be your phone or TV. We just don’t seem to be able to get away from them. When you pick up a pen and a pad of paper, you are no longer looking at a screen. The whole effect on your eyesight is going to change. This is certainly something I was beginning to feel. Pretty much everything I do involves a screen. There’s even a heads-up display in my car! I just don’t seem to be able to get away from them. Then there’s the type. I was recently looking through some of my old planners from 2009 and 2010 and found myself being transported back fifteen years to what I was thinking back then. It was a wonderful, nostalgic journey. My handwriting was unique; I could tell which pen I used and even the ink I was using back then. I can look at a digital document I created ten years ago, and it’s boring Helvetica in black. It pretty much looks the same as any document I create today. There’s nothing nostalgic. There’s a wonderful video on YouTube by Adam Savage (yes, the Adam Savage formerly of Mythbusters) where he shows an exact copy of one of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Codecs. WOW! I was blown away. It looked gorgeous—even though Da Vinci wrote backwards. The aged paper, the diagrams, the pen strokes. Everything looked so beautiful. So, as I was thinking about how I could bring pen and paper back into my system, I realised the one area where paper, for me, always works better than digital is in...

Are you restricting yourself too much? Attempting to stick to a too-embracing structure? It might be time to loosen up a bit. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The 2024 ULTIMATE PRODUCTIVITY WORKSHOP The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 310 Hello, and welcome to episode 310 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show. Having some kind of structure or routine built into your day is important if you want to consistently get the important things done. The trouble starts when you try to stick to that structure or routine too rigidly. It begins to limit what you can do and holds you back from accomplishing the things you set out to accomplish. Plus, if your plan is interrupted by the inevitable “emergencies”, the plan is usually thrown out the window, and everybody else’s problems become the focus. I’m all for building a structure around your day and week. It’s this structure that will ensure you get the right things done on time every time. But sometimes, something will inevitably come along and stop you from sticking to your routine or structure, and then, if you don’t have built-in inflexibility, everything will come crashing down. Either you drop everything, which leads to a build-up of backlogs, or you’ll stay too rigid and miss an opportunity that could lead to bigger and better things. This week’s question goes to the core of this dilemma, and I hope to give you some ideas to prevent it from happening to you. So, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Andre. Andre asks, Hi Carl, I love the idea of having a structured day, but I am having a hard time sticking to my plan. I never seem to have enough time to get all my work done, and I have a huge backlog of emails and project work to catch up on. It’s causing me so much stress and worry. Do you have any advice? Hi Andre, thank you for your question. You are right to create a structure around your day and week. Aside from weekly planning, I would say if anyone wants to become better at managing their time and ultimately more productive, they are going to need some form of structure to their day. However, as with most things, this can be taken too far. Take time blocking, for example. Time blocking is an excellent way to make sure you have enough time to do the critical things that need doing, yet if you try to micromanage your day—that is, you block your whole calendar—you only need one meeting or one task to overrun by just a few minutes and your day is destroyed. For time blocking to work effectively, you will need plenty of blank spaces. For example, you may wish to block two hours for some deep work in the morning, say, between 9:30 and 11:30, then an hour for managing your communications and an hour for clearing your admin tasks for the day. That way, if you work a typical eight-hour day, you have four hours for anything else that may come up. However, this rigidity may also be coming from outside forces. I love reading contemporary history. My favourite era is between 1945 and 1990. These were transformative years in both the US and Europe. I am particularly interested in how creative people, like Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond books, managed their days. What was noticeable was with few exceptions, there were no rigid working hours. If you worked in a factory doing physically demanding work surrounded by dangerous machinery, there were laws in most countries preventing you from being forced to work...

How much time do you spend organising and reorganising your work each day? A key question to ask if you are seeking better productivity and time management. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The 2024 ULTIMATE PRODUCTIVITY WORKSHOP The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 309 Hello, and welcome to episode 309 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show. Deciding to get organised and better at managing your time is a good goal to have. After all, when you know where everything is and what needs to be done, you will see an exponential increase in your productivity, and that means, if managed well, your time management will also improve. However, there is a fine line between spending too much time managing your stuff and not enough time doing your stuff. When you get caught up in that trap, you are lulled into feeling you are being productive when, in fact, you are not getting anything important done. There are many reasons why this happens, the most common of which is becoming obsessed with tools—the apps and technology that promise to make organising and doing your work easier. No, this does not happen. Sure, a solid set of tools can help, but these tools will never do the work for you. Some of the worst tools will cause you to waste a lot of time organising and maintaining them instead of helping you to do your work more effectively. Now, before we get to the question, I’d just like to give you a heads-up about this year’s Ultimate Productivity Workshop. This will be held on Friday the 9th and 16th February. Starting at 7:30 pm Eastern Standard Time (A little under two weeks away), This workshop will cover your calendar and task management in week one. In week two, we will look at how to manage email and other communications, as well as the all-important daily and weekly planning. By the end of these two sessions, you will have the know-how to build your very own “perfect” productivity system. But what’s more special about this workshop is when you register, you get access to four of my mini-courses for FREE, as well as a workbook for all sessons. PLUS, you get a chance to ask me anything about time management and productivity. Now, places are going fast, so if you don’t want to be disappointed, get yourself signed up now. Full details for the workshop are in the show notes below. So, what do you need to do to ensure you are spending the appropriate amount of time doing your work and managing the work coming in? Well, before we get to answering that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Kris. Kris asks, Hi Carl, is there a right balance between keeping my tasks and notes up to date and organised and doing the work? I find that keeping everything up to date takes me at least an hour a day and sometimes longer. It’s very frustrating. Hi Kris, thank you for your question. I am always very careful with these types of questions because it is a good thing to use a few tools to help you with your organisation. For instance, a well-maintained notes app will do a lot for your overall productivity because note apps today have incredible search functionality. This is far better than when we were trying to keep all our notes up to date in paper notebooks and file folders. However, because of this search functionality, we no longer need to spend a lot of time organising notes into folders (or notebooks, as some note apps call them) and tagging. All we need to do today is make sure...

Podcast 308 If you’re not in control of your time, who is? That’s what we’re looking at this week. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The CP Learning Centre Membership Programme The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 308 Hello, and welcome to episode 308 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show. One of the most common comments I get on my YouTube videos is about who controls your work day. The answer to that question is you. It’s always been you. Even at its most basic level, you accepted an offer to work where you work at some point, which was a choice you exercised. Similarly, as each day begins, you could choose to stay in bed and fake sickness—not something I would recommend, of course, but you always have that choice. And, you always have the nuclear button option—to quit at any time—although I hope it doesn’t need to come to that. The problem with all these choices—choices you make every day—is while you are free to make these choices, you also have to accept the consequences of your decisions. So, what you are really doing is calculating the cost/benefit of the decision you make. Staying in bed might seem a great idea on a cold, wet morning, but you probably know that by 11 am, you’ll be feeling guilty, and when thought about further, you will likely begin to feel a little anxious about all the things you might be missing out on. But one thing you should never tell yourself is you have no choice. You do, and you always will. Let’s put it this way: you may have an important, critical meeting with your CEO arranged at 11:00 am tomorrow morning, but if a close family member—your son or daughter, mother or father—is taken seriously ill overnight, you’re going to choose to be at the hospital with your family. (Well, at least I hope you are) In that situation, you are exercising your choice. You cannot be in two places at once, and therefore, you have to choose your priority. So, with all that said. Let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Isaac. Isaac asks, hi Carl, I have tried time blocking, but my boss won’t let me. Every time I sit down to get on with some deep work, he’ll call or message me, and I have to answer immediately. How do you deal with these scenarios? Hi Isaac, thank you for your question. One of the benefits of getting organised and in control of your day is you get to clearly see what needs to be done each day. Being able to see everything that needs to be done allows you to prioritise your work. The problems we face, though, rarely come from the work we have to do. They come from the interruptions and distractions coming at us from other people. But let’s get serious here. Most of us are not working in jobs that involve the life or death of patients. It’s not like someone in need of urgent attention from us is being wheeled into our offices for our immediate attention. So, let’s get real about how much time we have to do the work that comes at us. Your boss might like you to respond immediately, but I am sure they can wait, and if you have allowed them to become accustomed to your quick responses, perhaps it’s time to slowly ween them off that expectation. In my experience, bosses who demand instant attention from their team have been conditioned to expect instant responses. It’s not often your boss’s fault; it’s yours because you do it, therefore they expect it. In this situation, you have two options. You can have a face-to-face...

How much time do you spend organising and shuffling your work? And how much time do you spend doing the work? That’s what we’re looking at in this week’s episode. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The CP Learning Centre Membership Programme The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 307 Hello, and welcome to episode 307 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show. One of the great things about deciding to get organised, becoming better at managing time and being more productive is a sense of being in control and on top of everything coming at us. Nothing beats that feeling of knowing what needs to be done and that you have sufficient time today to get it done. However, there is a dark side to all this. That is elevating the tools and practices above actually doing the work. It’s great that all your tasks are neatly organised in a task manager, and your notes are all perfectly tagged and in their respective folders. But is the return on the time invested in maintaining all that worth it? I would go as far as to say that with all the technology built into your apps’ search engines, 90% of what you are doing to maintain all these apps and tools is wasted time. You don’t need to spend all that time doing it because a couple of hours spent learning how to search on your devices will render most of these maintenance activities redundant. And that is where this week’s question comes in. How much time do we need to spend each day organising and processing? The answer to that is probably a lot less than you think. So, without further ado, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Alysha. Alysha asks, hi Carl, I have been on a quest to get myself organised and become better at managing my time, but all the books and articles I read seem to tell me I have to spend hours each week organising, tagging and filing and I wonder if that is actually the best use of my time. Do you have any thoughts on this area? Hi Alysha, you make a very good point and one I often find myself despairing at when I see some of the questions I get in the comments section on my YouTube videos. It seems a lot of people are not actually interested in getting better at managing time or being more productive. They are much more interested in playing with the tools instead of doing the work. Let me explain. The tools and devices you use to be more productive are around 0.005% of what it takes to be more productive. To be more productive is about what you are producing. It's not about how well your task manager is organised or how precisely you have your notes tagged or organised. I mean, let’s be honest here, you can be exceptionally productive armed only with a paper notebook and a calendar. You don’t need anything more. All these wonderful digital tools are great, don’t get me wrong, but if they become the main focus of your whole system, then they become the distraction and prevent you from doing what needs to be done to be productive—that’s doing the work. Recently, I’ve been re-reading some older time management and productivity books. Books from the late 1980s and early 90s. These books were written before the massive advances in computer technology in the workplace and yet, the problems people were facing back then are the same fundamental problems people are facing today. There are the parents who are trying to juggle their career with raising their children. There’s the busy executive who is struggling to get...

Are you guilty of attempting to do too much each day? If you are, you may be suffering from something called “hero syndrome”, and it’s not a very productive way to manage your life. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The CP Learning Centre Membership Programme The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 306 Welcome to episode 306 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 remember a few years ago someone commented on a post I had written about only having 24 hours a day. The lady suggested that this was not strictly true because some people had more privileges than others. For instance a CEO might have an army of assistants, or a wealthy individual may have cooks, nannies and butlers in their home to do a lot of the work less privileged people need to do. I don’t disagree with her. What she pointed out is true. But, no matter who you are, you still only get 24 hours. A CEO is employed to make decisions, meet with key people within the organisation which their army of assistants cannot do for them, and if the wealthy individual wants to sit around all day with nothing to do drinking champagne and canapés, then good luck to them. It’s not a life I would like to live. The key to becoming more productive and better at managing your time is in how you make the most of your twenty-four hours. Knowing what your essentials are would be the first step, but what else can you do to ensure you are making the most of each day while ensuring you are getting enough rest and relaxation? Well, that’s the subject of this week’s question. Speaking of which, that means it’s time for me to hand you over to the Mystery podcast voice. This week’s question comes from Richard. Richard asks, hi Carl, I’ve always struggled to get everything I need to do done and when I get home at the end of the day, I’m just too exhausted to do anything but crash on the couch. Do you have any suggestions on better managing my time? Hi Richard, thank you for your question. It looks like what you describe is part of the journey to becoming better at managing your time. The first step is to acknowledge that things could be better. Your question suggests you are at that stage. One thing I would recommend is to do a task audit. What tasks are you trying to complete each day? Are they strictly necessary and if they are, could you group similar tasks together so you develop processes for getting them done. Let me give you an example. Most days I cook my own dinner. I also like to do my fair share of the house chores. So, I found a way to group cleaning up the kitchen and dining room while I cook my dinner. At first it felt a little overwhelming—watching my dinner cook while I was cleaning down the fridge or vacuuming the floors, yet today, it’s just something I automatically do. I no longer need to think about what I am doing. I’ve also taken to sorting out the laundry at the same time now. The laundry room is just off from the kitchen so it just seemed logical to either put a load of washing on or to fold the freshly laundered clothes. Now, I am cooking dinner, cleaning the kitchen and dining area and checking the washing. Now if I put all those tasks onto a task list, it would look ridiculously overwhelming. Yet it isn’t. It’s surprising what you can do in three and 3/4 minutes while you wait for your eggs to boil. The great thing is, I no longer need any of these chores on my list. When I make dinner, that’s my trigger to do the chores. Doing a task audit will likely highlight a...

Hello and welcome to 2024! And in this episode, I’m answering a question about sticking with your New Year plans. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The CP Learning Centre Membership Programme The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 305 Welcome to episode 305 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host for this show. So, 2024 is here. A New Year with a lot of potential new opportunities and plans. The challenge you will face (because we all face this challenge) is executing on all the ideas and plans you have for this year without a loss of enthusiasm or energy. And that will happen because no matter how well you have planned the year, things will not work out as you imagine. Some things will go exactly how you expect them to, but most will not. And that’s the same for everyone. If you deliver all your plans and projects exactly as conceived, you are not ambitious enough to move forward. You’re making things too easy. So how do you avoid the loss of enthusiasm and energy that you will need to see you through the year? Well, that’s the topic of this week’s question, so let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for the question. This week’s question comes from Carrie. Carrie asks, hi Carl, every year I get excited about all the things I want to do, and when it gets to February or March, I lose all my enthusiasm because I haven’t done anything I had planned to do. Do you have any advice on avoiding this? Hi Carrie, thank you for your question and Happy New Year to you too. One thing I can tell you straight up is you are not alone. It turns out 92% of those who set New Year goals or resolutions have given up by 16th February. Only 8% manage to achieve some of their goals. This means we need to learn what those eight percent do that is different from the 92%. The first thing I discovered about the 8% is they have no more than three goals for the year. And those three are very specific. For example, they may have a financial, a physical and perhaps a career goal. And that’s it. If we use these as an example, the financial goal is possibly the easiest. Imagine your financial goal is to save $5,000 this year. You can break that down into twelve months and send $417.00 per month to your savings account. On the 31st of December, you will have a little over $5,000 in it. On a task level, this is a 30-second task once a month where you send the $417.00 to your account. Now, if your finances are tight, you may have to review what you are spending money on and make some changes to what you spend, but the action to take is just thirty seconds per month. Physical goals can be a little more complex. Not everyone does exercise to lose weight. Some just want to improve their overall health; others would like to challenge themselves physically by running a marathon or climbing a big mountain. However, whatever the purpose or “what” the goal is, physical goals mean you need to find time for regular exercise. The essence of the goal is to find the time and do the exercise, and that will almost certainly achieve your goal. The difficulty with these types of goals is the starting point. If you have not exercised for a number of years and are not in great shape, it is going to be hard. This is like pulling a large truck. The hardest part of pulling a truck is the start. When the rope you are attached to takes the strain to get the truck moving, it takes an inordinate amount of strength. However, once the truck begins to move, it gets easier and easier. The difficulty...

In this week’s episode, how can you stay motivated and productive in retirement? You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The CP Learning Centre Membership Programme The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 304 Hello, and welcome to episode 304 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. We often think time management and productivity are the realms of students and busy people trying to maintain a growing career and balance a growing family. The truth is once we begin making decisions for ourselves, how we use our time becomes a deciding factor in what we do each day. This means once we leave the workforce and take full responsibility for what we do each day, managing our time becomes even more important. If you think about it, when we are in work, there’s often a time we need to be in the office, an array of meetings and deadlines for projects that need to be completed. These deadlines and commitments are often given to us by our bosses and customers. Once you retire, those deadlines are no longer handed out by bosses and customers. Now you have complete control over what you do each day. You can go to bed and wake up whenever you like; you no longer need to wait for the weekends or evenings to meet up with friends, and all those activities you promised yourself you would do once you retire can now be done. Just because you are retired and no longer working does not mean you no longer need to worry about how you manage your time. In many ways, now you have complete control over what you do each day time management and productivity practices are more important than ever. And that neatly leads me to this week’s question, and to give you the question it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice. This week’s question comes from Kai Yee. Kai Yee asks: Hi Carl, how would you suggest a person apply your systems after they have retired? Hi Kai Yee, thank you for your question. One of the things I’ve learned is that no matter where you are in life, there will always be things to do. In many ways, when you are working, managing your time is much easier because your work gives you structure to your day. You have a time to wake up, a regular place to be at a set time each day and a finish time. When you retire, that structure disappears, and it can be disorientating. You no longer need to wake up to be somewhere at a given time, and without a plan or a reason to get up, time will disappear incredibly fast. So the first thing you should do is to give yourself a solid structure which means bringing your calendar into play. What do you want time for each day? You could begin with your wake-up and going-to-sleep times. Get these fixed into your calendar. If I were in the fortunate position to retire today, I would set my wake-up time at 8:30 am and bedtime at 1:00 am. I love the quiet between 11 and 1 am, and I get a lot of reading or learning done at that time. Your wake-up and going to bed times will act as the bookends for your day. One of the most important things you can do when you retire is to find time each day for exercise. And as I have mentioned before, exercise does not necessarily mean going to the gym or out for a run. All it means is movement. When you don’t have any commitments for the day, it can be tempting to wake up, make your morning beverage sit down and not do anything all day. Time will just slip away. I experience this frequently when I head over to Ireland for the Christmas holidays. I don’t have a structure, so after...

I and many other people in the productivity world talk a lot about planning your day. However, what happens when your plans are frequently destroyed by other people? You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The CP Learning Centre Membership Programme The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 303 \ Script Hello, and welcome to episode 303 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. As the Scottish poet Robert Burns once wrote “The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley”. “Gang aft agley” can be translated as go awry. This means that no matter how well you plan your day or week, things are not going to go according to plan. Similarly, one of my favourite quotes that is often attributed to Mike Tyson is, “Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face.” And it’s so true. One of the reasons so few people actually do a daily or weekly plan is because they believe that no matter what they plan, it is going to be torpedoed once they begin the day. A simple text message or email can derail the whole day. Yet, I still believe it is important to have a plan. Without a plan, you will be waiting for others to give you something to do. You will feel lost and never get anything important to you done, and you are guaranteed to build horrendous backlogs. This leads me to this week’s question, and for that, it means it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice. This week’s question comes from Sasha. Sasha asks, Hi Carl, what tips do you have for me to harden my system so that it doesn't constantly wobble when life experiences significant deviations outside of the planned week? Hi Sasha, thank you for your question. Now, I know there is a little more background to your question. Specifically, managing two young children and both yourself and your wife working full time. So with that in mind the first problem people face is with being too structured. What I mean by this is being too specific about what you want to get done each day. Most of the things we want to get done around the house do not really need to be done on a specific day. For instance, I like to give my home office a really good clean on a Saturday morning, but more often than not something will come up that prevents me from being able to do that. Now if I want to follow my calendar religiously, it would annoy me if I was prevented from doing what I had planned, but really, does my office need a good clean specifically on a Saturday morning? No of course not. It would be nice, but it really doesn’t matter if I do it on Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon. The only thing that really matters is at some point in the week I do it. (But even then that is debatable). This problem can be exacerbated if you have young kids. With kids under the age of 13, there’s no way you will be able to maintain a well structured home. Kids were born with the natural ability to destroy all well intentioned plans. And that’s fantastic. It’s all part of the experience of raising children. If it didn’t happen, you’d miss out on one of life’s joys. I can promise you on the day your kids turn 13 you will miss all that disruption. Your kids are going to go from being entirely dependent on you to wanting to have nothing to do with you as they go through adolescence. For most of you, I hope, your family comes first. This means if you get irritated because a family member ungently, and unexpectedly, needs you you should be happy. It might be inconvenient, but family comes first. There’s no debate. If...

This week, what to do when your day, or week, turns sour and you’re left feeling overwhelmed and stressed out. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The CP Learning Centre Membership Programme The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 302 \ Script Hello, and welcome to episode 302 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. In my weekly newsletter last week, I wrote about how, for some reason, the end of the year seems to throw up a lot of stuff that suddenly needs to be finished before the end of year. While deadlines are always around us, it seems December is the month that projects and tasks, that were slowly moving along just fine, become urgent and must be complete in the next two weeks or so. This leaves you feeling stressed out and under pressure at a time of year you want to be slowing down and relaxing. This week’s question talks directly to this phenomenon and I want to give you a number of strategies that will help you to stay on top of things and get through to the end of year break feeling in control and ready to enjoy Christmas and the New Year celebrations. So, to get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Brett. Brett asks, hi Carl, I want to know if you ever feel under pressure or overwhelmed at the end of the year. And if not, what do you do to stay in control when everyone around you is demanding their projects are completed before the Christmas holidays? Hi Brett, thank you for your question. You’re right, for some reason before any long holiday there does seem to be a big rush to get things finished. Whether it is Christmas, Eid, Yom Kippur or the end of the calendar year bosses and colleagues suddenly wake up and realise they are behind on a number of projects and so the panic sets in and everything needs to be completed yesterday. The truth is, it shouldn’t matter where you are in the year, if you have planned things out and developed a timeline for getting things done, there should never be a rush to complete things at the last minute. Now, when I say planned things out and developed a timeline, I don’t mean micro-managed plans, but a rough set of milestones for each project that needs to be completed in the year. One trick I use is to divide my year up into quarters and to limit the number of projects I allow to no more than four each quarter. That still means I get between ten and twelve big projects complete each year but I do it in a way that ensures I am not overly stressing my system and I have sufficient breathing room between each one that allows for small over-runs and delays. Sure, I could set about trying to complete ten or more projects each quarter, but then most of them won’t be finished and all I am doing is letting people down by constantly missing deadlines. That’s not something I will allow myself to do. Now, when I talk about projects here I am talking about projects that will take four to ten weeks to complete. A lot of what I do each week are things I do every week. Preparing this podcast is not a project, it’s part of my core work and is a process. Likewise my blog posts and YouTube videos are all a part of my core work and I have processes for getting these done each week. For me, a project is something like developing a new course, or redesigning my website or even writing a book—which I confess took up three quarters this year. And on that subject, the book is now being edited and the cover design is close to...