How often do you do a complete review of your system? That’s the question I’m answering this week. 

 

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Script

Episode 117

Hello and welcome to episode 117 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 week, I have a fantastic question about reviewing your productivity system and what you should review and why. Our environment and work are in constant change, perhaps not big changes, but little changes and over time these changes need to be reflected in our productivity systems. 

As part of reviewing any system, I should point out that if you have already taken the COD course (that’s Collect, Organise and Do) then redoing the course is a great way to review your overall system. It should help you to refocus on the basics and re-evaluate your objectives for any system.

If you haven’t already taken the course, you can do so for FREE. It’s around forty minutes long and will give the basics of setting up your very own COD productivity course. 

Okay, it’s now time for me to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Stuart. Stuart asks: Hi Carl, I’ve heard you mention that you regularly review your whole system. Could you tell me why you do that, how often and what do you review when you do it? 

Thank you, Stuart, for the question. You’re right, I do review my system. I do it once or twice a year. I feel it’s important to periodically review my system because things change. What worked for me two years ago likely does not work as efficiently today. And that's because not only do our work and work scope change so does who we are and how we work. 

The question though, is how often should you review your system? Well, here we need to be careful. Too frequently and you never allow any system to settle and become automatic. It can also be used as an excuse to try new apps when your current apps may not be the problem. 

So, for me, I review my system every six months or so. Six months feels like the ‘perfect’ time and it also means my reviews do not last too long. 

How do you go about doing a review? For me, it starts in my notes app. What I do is I review my previous review’s note. This is great because it will immediately highlight any areas I was looking at in my previous review and in a way it’s a pre-made template. If you don’t delete any part of this note it also becomes a fantastic record of how your system has evolved and grown as you have become better organised and more productive. 

It also means you can add comments about your thinking in the previous review and that helps with the current review. 

So what do we look at?

The first step is to review how you are collecting your stuff. Can you

collect fast and collect seamlessly? In my experience, if there are too many steps to collect you will resist. You may not resist all the time, but resisting just once is enough to miss something important and when you miss something, that creates distrust in your system. You need to trust your system. Without that trust, everything falls apart. 

So how do you collect? Is there any way you could make it faster? Can you collect when you are at your computer just as fast as on your mobile phone? I say that because most people are pretty fast at collecting on their phone—we’re doing so all the time—and not so good on their computer where we collect less frequently. 

Are there any keyboard shortcuts you can set up? If you were to have a brilliant idea, how would you collect that if you were sat at your computer? Are you clicking an icon or using a keyboard shortcut? Remember,