What we did this week is unusual for us, but we hope this works out to be a good format for an ongoing series on the podcast. Each of us proposed an independent topic, a productivity potpourri if you will, and we asked it of the other ProductivityCast teammates. We all went round robin and answered and discussed these topics. And hopefully we get into a place where we realize, some of these topics could be its own episode with your feedback...so let us know in the comments.

In this cast, we discuss these questions/topics from the ProductivityCast team:

Art: If you had one piece of advice to give someone to get started on being more productive what would it be and why?Augusto: Importance to creating small changes to produce big impacts.Francis: How do you get better (i.e. more productive) over a career that spans decades?Ray: There are a plethora of tools out there today. How do you connect your various personal productivity tools to have an integrated management system?

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/057 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.)

Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening!

If you'd like to continue discussing managing digital notebooks from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | Productivity Potpourri, Premiere Edition

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Productivity Potpourri, Premiere Edition

Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox

Raw Text Transcript | Productivity Potpourri, Premiere Edition

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17

And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:26I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:27 And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:24 Welcome everyone who's listening to productivitycast to this week's episode, what we're going to do this week is a little unusual, unique, it'll be something that we may try to do in the future. If this works out to be a good format, what we're going to do is we're going to take four independent topics that each of us has come up with, and we are going to ask it of the other productivity cast team members. So we're all going to go round robin and kind of answer and discuss these many topics that I think will be quite interesting. And and hopefully we get into a place where we realize, wow, this could be its own episode by itself. So let's see what happens we'll take a little bit of time for each of us to ask the question and then go from there. So let's let's start off at the top alphabetically. Art,

Art Gelwicks 1:15

one of the things that we always have to try to do is get people over that initial hump of starting to be productive. So the question I have for the three of you is, if you had to give one piece of advice to someone who was looking to get started on being productive, what would it be and why,

Augusto Pinaud 1:32

if I get somebody who approached me was technique dependent, the person I will say is one or the other. If you have a person who has at least a basic basic understanding of productivity, then I will tell them to start writing down daily their goals. If you have a person who is before that point, then I tell these people, this person to start collecting and start writing things down. Because I think if you don't have anything, the first thing you need to do is to get into the important habit of collecting of Don't let things scape to take things out of your mind on your brain. So that way you can go later into other steps.

Francis Wade 2:11

One piece of advice I'd give them is is is actually to capture something from their past, it comes from the idea that they already have 90% of what they need. And they're already doing most things productively, I'm assuming that we're talking to an adult who has a full life kids job, mortgage, you know, the average adult, the average functional adult. And what I tell them is that they're not new to productivity, that they've been trying to be productive since they were about 10 or 11 years old. And they've been building habits and practices and doing different things in order to become more productive. And I maybe take them back to their history and say, when did you? When did you realize that you needed to be productive, where you needed to be effective, and had them go back to some story about what happened when they were 11 years old, and something fell through the cracks, and it was a disaster. And so I'd want them to recap show what the great they've taken. And the reason I do that I do that is to get them present to the idea that they are already a builder of productivity systems, and one they have no probably just hasn't grown up to meet the needs that they have today. So I want to get that sort of skill in their awareness and then ask some questions or on what's the nature of their system today, from the point of view of the unwanted symptoms they're experiencing? So I'd ask them, What what are the things that you want to get rid of that aren't working so I would stop bad actually start with questions,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:36

in terms of the first piece of advice I give to most people who are interested in becoming more productive is to learn their tools fully, I can't impress upon people enough the importance of understanding the tools that they're already using it unfortunately, people tell me that they need a tool in order to be more productive. And most often than not, they're already using tools. So the very basic is most people know their way around Microsoft Word or some kind of text editor word processor. And lo and behold, you can keep a checklist in there. Honestly, you could keep your agenda, you know, calendar in a single word document and be fine. If you fully understand how Microsoft Word works, you'd recognize its power, and that you probably could create an entire productivity system in there, do you want to ultimately, maybe not. But the idea is, is that if you don't know your tools fully, then you don't know where they were, they fail you. And ultimately, that means that you are not going to be as productive as you can be. And you'll keep chasing the dream of an ideal tool, and nothing like that exists, there is no ideal tool out there, there's always going to be a tool that works 80 to 90, maybe you can give it even get it to 95% of your ideal, but that's not what makes you a skilled worker, what makes you skilled as a worker is being able to get the job done. And if you're good at it, then it doesn't matter what tool you're using. But it really does matter that you know, the tools, you know, so I guess it goes back to that, you know, if you give a broken hammer and a broken chisel to a skilled skilled sculptor, they'll still be able to you know on earth the the Donatello from the marble, and that's just the reality of it, you know, you you doesn't it doesn't matter what the tool is, it really matters the skill of the of the person who's using it. So learn those skills aren't now that we have all answered your question. What's your own? What do you have any questions for us based on our answers? And what's your answer to that question?

Art Gelwicks 5:39

I don't have any questions for you guys. Because I think you were very succinct and clear on getting some or giving some ideas to people on how to really get the ball rolling. My personal response to it is usually a two word answer, capture everything, probably the most common problem I see people having is either a, they have things falling through the cracks, because they just don't have a total picture is to everything that's coming in that they need to deal with, or they feel overwhelmed, because they don't have that total landscape. They're not sure what all they have to have taken care of, and when and how so they make the mistake of trying to keep stuff in their head. And as soon as you start to try to keep stuff in your head, you're asking for trouble. Our brains are not built for that. We're very good at processing, we're very good at manipulating, storing, and recalling not quite so much, at least not in the ways we need to be productive. So as a as a recurring thing. I tell people, if you're going to start someplace, start by capturing everything, I don't care where I don't care what tool I don't care how you're doing it pen, paper, audio recording, digital images, digital link, doesn't matter. Just the pure act of capturing everything will get you started on being able to handle your productivity. Well, that was a fantastic round one. We made it in under time. So that's great. Let's, let's take it to round two.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 7:01

Round two. That brings us to you, Joe, what's your question for us all related to small changes?

Augusto Pinaud 7:08

No, no,