ProductivityCast

In this episode we're discussing the concept at the core of personal management: control. Specifically, we’ll be philosophizing about what control truly means within the context of the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. We'll start with David Allen’s definition, which ties control to the workflow stages of capturing, clarifying, organizing, reflecting, and engaging. But does that definition fully capture the complex, often psychological, reality of feeling "in control"? Then, we explore how to build tangible systems and "guardrails" that move us from simply feeling overwhelmed to being confidently in command of our work and personal lives.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/145 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 what control means in the context of GTD from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | What Does Control Mean in GTD?

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | What Does Control Mean in GTD?

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

Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen

How to Get Control of Your Time in Your Life by Alan Lakein

Freedom.to (A Focus application used to block digital distractions)

Fitbit watch (Used to track sleep)

Byron Katie's process (A methodology for managing unwanted thoughts or feelings)

Raw Text Transcript

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 | 00:00

Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a more fulfilling, productive life? Then you've come to the right place. Welcome to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. Here are your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 00:19

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

Augusto Pinaud | 00:25

And I'm Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade | 00:26

I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks | 00:28

And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 00:29

Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode. Today, we are going to do some philosophizing, I suppose, and hopefully bringing ourselves from that level down to the practical. We're going to be talking about control. And what I wanted to do was to preface this with The concept of control and perspective in the Getting Things Done or GTD methodology perspective, which is that that's where came up to me in the first place. And over the years, it has changed. And so I want to talk about what does control mean to each of us and how do we actually make the concept of control practical even tangible in our own worlds. I'm going to define what David Allen says of control in Getting Things Done in the March 2015 edition, in the appendix, in the glossary of Getting Things Done terms, he actually gives a definition for control And then we're going to talk a little bit about what, the concept of GTD control is so that we can then define what We think of it as in contrasting terms. 

So he says of control, one of the two key elements of self and organizational management along with perspective. And so that's what he calls control in the most basic terms. And if we think about it from the concept of control and perspective, control are the steps of the or stages of the workflow going from capturing to clarifying to organizing, reflecting and engaging on the action level of the horizons of focus. That is what he considers control. 

And then as we go up the horizons on the y-axis, we then have projects and so on and so forth going up the horizons. And that's what he considers perspective. 

So control are the actions that we take on the lowest level of the horizons of focus and everything above that becomes perspective. So kind of thinking of it as looking down at the actionability of the thing above itself. 

So when you're at the highest level, Horizon 5 purpose and principle You are looking down at the other's vision, goals, areas of focus and accountability, projects, and actions. So that is the GTD definition. And... We have all probably thought of it as being insufficient in some way, shape or form in our own worlds. And now what I'd like to do is to ask you all, gentlemen. How do you define control? And what is... If I think Art gave a really great example before we started recording, if someone came to you and said, I'm feeling out of control, how do you help them get in control or under control in their life?

Francis Wade | 03:10

So I think David Allen's definition is basically a process definition. So he's saying, here are the steps. Or managing tasks. And the ones that really start with capturing and so forth are basically the steps for managing tasks. And I suppose that I'm guessing that what he means by control is that the... Process of managing tasks is in control. Now, that has a very specific meaning in my world. I was trained in part as an industrial engineer. And we love For those of you who know the Leningrad-Stewart charts and control charts, we love the idea of measuring processes so that they stay in control. That's not practical for most people to be able to use these kind of diagnostic tools. But the way I would advise to answer your question, Reem, someone who tells me that they're out of control... Is to ask them What do you mean? Because the word control is a psychological object The definition has changed and it varies and there's no uniform. Understanding of what it means. 

So you have to go to the next step and say, When you say control, the question I would ask is when you say control, What specifically? Symptoms are the ones that you notice and I would imply in real life. Not just in your emotional life, but in The Hard Tensible Life where are those symptoms occurring? Such that you're led to conclude that you're feeling out of control. 

So I would immediately go to and I would focus and start to break down their response. Between I've mentioned psychological objects like I'm feeling stressed, I'm feeling unhappy, I'm feeling unworthy, I'm feeling lazy. As opposed to I arrive at half of my appointments at least ten minutes late. Okay, there we go. That's one. That's a tangible object. We can work with that. What else do you have? Well... I wake up in the middle of the night three times out of the week. With something that I forgot to do. That's two. All right, that's another tangible activity. 

So I would look for the tangible symptoms. The things that you can put your finger on, you can touch, you can see. 

And then accumulate those so that we move the conversation from and feeling out of control. Towards And again, in the lingo of industrial engineers is defects. We're looking for defects. And we're looking to put them together so that we can say, okay, with these five defects, the root cause of them are Because the truth is, control is a lag indicator. Peely Walter Control is a lag indicator. Comes a lot after. The things that you Did or didn't do. 

So we're trying to go all the way back so that When we start to... Figure out what they should do, We're actually looking at things that they did do or need to do or didn't do. In tangible reality. 

So that's how I would tackle it. Said that to me.

Art Gelwicks | 06:21

Control to me is a very... Unlike the industrial... Definition of it. I look at it from the almost the psychological side of it. Control is a perceived state of comfort It's a lack of stress. It's a... Point of awareness. Of activity And I think when someone says they are out of control, my first reaction is to ask the question, When do you feel things went out of control. Because I need to know contextually Is this something that is a recurring feeling, which means that it is probably systemic. To a process failure Or is it something that has recently happened, which may be triggered by an environmental response or some external factor that has pushed things off the rails? But control itself like a, can be an extremely negative impact. On work and process and quality of work. Having a sense of control. I don't know is necessarily an extremely positive thing. It's basically neutral. You feel like, okay, if I'm in control, I can do... What I need to do. If I'm out of control, I can't do what I need to do. But at no point are we saying that if I'm in control, I can do better things. I'm just saying that I can do things. 

So to me, I always look at it from the mental aspect of it more than the process one, because The process one I can chase. I mean, I can look at the measures. I can look at the metrics involved and say, OK, this is working. This isn't this. But that doesn't necessarily, again, translate to a lack of control. And we've all seen it. We've had people who have processes that work somewhat. But they feel like they are in control, but we know looking at it, it's like, no, you're not. As much as you think you are, you're careening wildly down the highway. 

So... The subjectivity of that term and the amorphousness of that term makes it difficult to have that initial conversation.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 08:49

...

In this episode of ProductivityCast, we continue our deep dive into the psychological and tactical differences between stalling out and stepping back. While Part 1 focused on defining the core constructs of procrastination and conscious deferral, Part 2 moves into the "why" and the "how."

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/144 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 the concepts of procrastination, conscious deferral and/or unconscious deferral from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | Procrastination vs Conscious Deferral

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Procrastination vs Conscious Deferral

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

Key Takeaways

Practice Persistent Starting: Don’t focus on the final outcome; focus on the act of beginning. Success is the aggregate of many small "starts."

Diagnose the "Anchor Weight": If you are avoiding a task, it is likely due to a "lack of definition." Take five minutes to clarify the very next physical step to lower the barrier to entry.

Distinguish Deferral from Procrastination: Conscious deferral is a strategic choice based on missing resources; procrastination is choosing a lower-value activity (like escapist media) over a high-priority intent.

Utilize Retrospective Planning: After completing a difficult project, perform a "post-mortem" to document the steps you took. This creates a historical record that reduces anxiety for similar future tasks.

Stop the "Shoulding": Avoid labeling yourself a "procrastinator." Using the term often induces shame and a "fear-based response" that further erodes the confidence needed to begin.

Timestamps

[01:51] The Anchor Weight: Why lack of definition causes stalling.

[07:50] Unconscious Deferral vs. Procrastination: The role of the unconscious mind.

[12:32] The Danger of Identity Labeling: Why calling yourself a "procrastinator" is harmful.

[20:12] Moving Past Anxiety: Tactics for getting the ball rolling on new projects.

[27:29] Persistent Starting: Using Dr. Neil Fiore’s technique to overcome blocks.

[36:38] The Hunter-Gatherer Brain: Why our biology fights against long-term goals.

[44:31] The Benefits of Procrastination: Using it as a filter for the unnecessary.

Resources Mentioned

Books:

The Now Habit by Dr. Neil Fiore

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Concepts/Methods:

Getting Things Done (GTD)

The Byron Katie method for questioning thoughts.

Retrospective (Backwards) Planning.

People:

Gretchen Rubin (The Four Tendencies/Upholders).

Raw Text Transcript

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 | 00:29Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode of ProductivityCast. Today, we are going to continue our conversation around procrastination and conscious deferral. And the conversation last time really covered mostly us discussing the defining nature of or just defining the nature of these two constructs, both procrastination and conscious deferral. And so what I'd like us to do is So if you have not listened to that episode, I would highly recommend that you hop back to the part one of this particular two episodes, and then we will now continue today in terms of really discussing the What we're going to do today is then start discussing why we procrastinate in the first place? What are some of the understandings of why we procrastinate and what are reasons for conscious deferral?And then we will… Discuss probably in and amongst that ways in which you can overcome procrastination and when it's probably appropriate to do conscious deferral. When it actually may not be, and it then bleeds back into procrastination. And there's a fine line there, of course.So let's talk about what are the major reasons why You all procrastinate. What are the reasons you've determined that procrastination ekes its way into your everyday life?Art Gelwicks | 01:51I'll throw myself under the bus first. One of the most common reasons that I'll put something off is lack of definition. If I haven't taken time to truly define out all the steps necessary to execute something, it winds up with this anchor weight attached to it to say, "Well, you don't know what you don't know, and you don't know quite what you're supposed to do, so maybe you should go do something else." Whether true or not, That's kind of where things wind up getting pushed to.So that, I'd say that's my primary one is lack of definition around what I'm supposed to be executing.Augusto Pinaud | 02:28Yeah, I need to agree with you 100%. For me… I can tell. By Monday morning. How good or bad my weekly review was on Friday. And I wish to tell that all of them are incredibly good. And I get out of there with a clear mind. And sometimes it doesn't happen. Even sometimes I do some kind of weekly review on Friday. I need to compliment that over the weekend because that is Lack of clarity, that lack of have that clear list of projects and actions, all that it produce is emergencies, fires and procrastination in my world.Francis Wade | 03:12I have a question though then, because the kind of the procrastination that Art was talking about sounds to me more like conscious deferral. That he's not unconsciously Putting off. The lack of definition. He's consciously doing it.Well, I should ask him. Are you unconsciously doing it because you haven't defined the action or are you consciously doing.Art Gelwicks | 03:33It? No, it's… I would agree it would look like conscious deferral that I'm making that action that, I don't have enough detail, therefore I can't get started. I'm not going to give it that level of credit. It's really a, it's a two-step problem. And the more I think about it, the first step in the problem is recognizing that I now need to allocate time to gather that information to know what I need to do for that thing.So for example, let's say I'm planning out an online ad. And I have some of the information I need, but I don't have all of it. And I know it needs to go out at a certain time.Well, I could just say it needs to be done. Or… What happens is I recognize that I need to spend some time filling in those gaps of the process necessary for that item, which means I'm going to have to chase down information to fill those gaps.So to execute that Task? There's a bunch of extra work that I need to front load. And that makes that task feel bigger, creating a bigger anchor, creating a bigger roadblock, therefore, subconsciously encouraging me to push that back to do things that I know I can accomplish and move forward on, which unfortunately winds up in that thing getting pushed back to a point where it becomes problematic.So. There may be times where that's a conscious thing where I say, look, I just don't know what I need to know. Therefore, I'm not going to do that thing. But to me, that's not procrastination. You're absolutely right. That's a choice. That's somebody hasn't provided me an update or something like that. That's a waiting on or a follow up. It's when I myself have not defined things clearly enough. To say Should or should I not proceed with this? That's when the procrastination part will kick in and say, you know what, why don't you hold off on that? You can go do something that you feel better about. And it's, I think it's the feel part more than anything. Because there isn't a rational reason to delay that work. It has to be done. There's nothing about it that says that you shouldn't be doing it. But there's a subconscious feeling there that's saying there's an almost an anxiety that's attached to it. Saying, you're going to find something that is going to be a real problem. Maybe you should put that off. I don't know if that helps any of us.Augusto Pinaud | 06:00No. And you bring a great point that it's that anxiety. It's the procrastination. It starts happening because I start getting all that anxiety of, is this really up to date? Is this really possible? The valuable task that I need to move forward? Is this really what need to happen? Or not. And that or not is the killing part of that.Francis Wade | 06:25I have a different, not different, but I have a… As I'm thinking about this, I wrote a an article on procrastination. It was a long time, like a decade ago. But I basically said that Something along the lines that procrastination was not well defined. And it seemed more like a The feeling. Than a fact. But what's happened over the years is that If someone were to ask me if I procrastinate, I would say no. I don't have that. Kind of self-talk....

What if procrastination is not always procrastination? In this episode of ProductivityCast, we begin exploring the difference between true procrastination and conscious deferral, and why that distinction matters more than most people realize. This conversation challenges the labels we use, the judgment we attach to delay, and the hidden reasons we avoid certain tasks, making this a thought-provoking starting point for anyone who has ever wondered whether they are putting something off or making a more intentional choice.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/144 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 procrastination versus conscious deferral from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | Procrastination Versus Conscious Deferral

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Procrastination Versus Conscious Deferral

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

In this first part of a two-part discussion, the ProductivityCast team examines the meaning of procrastination and questions whether the term has become too broad, judgmental, and unhelpful. The conversation begins by comparing common definitions of procrastination and quickly moves into a deeper exploration of whether all delay should be treated the same. The hosts distinguish between unconscious delay, conscious prioritization, and what Ray describes as conscious deferral, which is the intentional decision to postpone something for a clear reason. They also explore how the label of procrastination can create shame, obscure the real causes of delay, and distort how we interpret other people’s behavior in work and life. The episode ultimately reframes procrastination as a more complex mix of perception, prioritization, emotional regulation, and context, setting up a follow-up discussion on how to handle procrastination at both the project and task levels.

Key Takeaways:

Not every delay is procrastination; some delays are intentional, rational, and better understood as conscious deferral.

Labeling yourself or others as a procrastinator can add shame without revealing the real cause of the delay.

A better question than “Why am I procrastinating?” may be “What is preventing this from feeling clear, doable, or important right now?”

In leadership and collaboration, replacing blame with curiosity helps uncover obstacles, competing priorities, or missing information.

Much of what looks like procrastination may actually be displaced activity, where you are still doing something, just not the thing you believe you should be doing.

Timestamps:

[00:00] Introducing the problem of procrastination vs. conscious deferral

[00:02] Why common definitions of procrastination may be too simplistic

[00:05] Internal judgment, external judgment, and who gets to define procrastination

[00:09] The emotional weight of procrastination and the case for conscious deferral

[00:13] Unconscious choices, intuition, and the hidden reasons behind delay

[00:19] How to think about procrastination in teams, leadership, and collaboration

[00:33] Procrastination as displaced activity and preview of Part 2

Resources Mentioned:

Wikipedia definition of procrastination

Dr. Gary Klein on intuition

Conversations for Action

Raw Text Transcript

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 0:28Welcome gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode of ProductivityCast. Today we're gonna be talking about procrastination versus or and conscious deferral.

And what we're gonna do is we're gonna define procrastination. I think everybody procrastinates a little bit and sometimes a lot in their lives, and we wanna talk about why we procrastinate and what are some of the things we. Do when we consciously defer projects, goals, and tasks from what we are [00:01:00] presently and actively working on, and then we can close out with discussion on maybe if you are struggling with procrastination, what are some things that.

If it's hindering your productivity, what can you do to get over that hump? And we can give some quick tips for folks to get started with conquering procrastination at the end. So let's start off at the top, which is, let's all get on perhaps the same page relating to procrastination. How do you define procrastination?

I am gonna pause here for a moment. Francis, if you could just stay if everybody just stays off mute, I wanna see, I can void out your audio, so don't worry about muting yourself. Only because when I'm wondering if that has something to do with why it gets into the drift mode. 'cause when you are muted Oh.

I'll start us off and you all can perhaps add on to the definition. And I went to a bunch of different places, but I think Wikipedia actually ended up having a, an interesting [00:02:00] definition that I don't necessarily agree with.

And I think this is helpful for us to start the conversation, which is Wikipedia defines procrastination as an action of unnecessarily and. Voluntarily delaying or postponing something despite knowing that there will be negative consequences for doing so. So I immediately feel like this is not true in some perspective here because it says unnecessarily and voluntarily, and we know that not everybody is aware of the.

Negative consequences and sometimes there are not negative consequences for procrastinating. And so I'm curious about just that base level definition from Wikipedia. Do you agree or disagree? That only works if you're taking involuntary delay and giving it a different name because [00:03:00] procrastination is a blanket term that any sort of a delay on something.

It's either do it or don't do it. And if you do it, you're in action. If you're not, you're procrastinating. It's not about the how, so I don't know that I necessarily agree with their definition of procrastination. But I also don't think the term necessarily needs to include the cause. It is a delay of action.

When an action should be taken. Maybe phrase it that way or it would be. Beneficial for an action to be taken, what the trigger of that could be, any number of things. And I don't think they, they are remotely related to the term procrastination. So this is where I have some difficulty because the most tasks, of course, are delayed until later.

If not every task that you plan to do in the future is based on a delay and. There's a cost for delaying any [00:04:00] task. In other words it's, there's a risk that it might not get done. So the only way to remove the risk of doing a task and not doing a task in the future is to do it. No. So by that definition, procrastination covers every single task.

That is, in other words, every time demand, every one that you're gonna do in the future, at that point, the verb procrastinate loses its value because all it's saying is, whatever you're not doing, whatever task you're not doing. No. At that point, I don't think it has much value. So I don't like the, I don't like the idea that procrastination is putting off a task.

I don't think it, it adds a lot of value. I think there's a, what if we were to re rephrase the definition? 'cause we were all about definitions to procrastination. Being inaction when action should be taken. Because theoretically, if you're not doing something and you're [00:05:00] supposed to be doing that thing, you're either unintentionally putting it off.

You're intentionally putting it off. It's an either or situation. There is a, there's a decision point for the conscious part, but the unconscious part, no, it can just happen. One of the things when we talk about what is procrastination, we never start to look at it from the standpoint of saying, okay, this, take something simple.

Taking out the trash. I choose not to take out the trash. Or I'm going to do something else. I may have chosen to do something else. And what ha what happens is taking out the trash gets put off. But if that context isn't provided in the definition, the perception is then, oh, you procrastinated on taking out the trash.

No, I did make a conscious decision to do something else I prioritized over. So when we go back to [00:06:00] procrastination. I still think it comes back to that inaction when action is warranted. How you get to that point could be any number of factors, but I think that's as simple in my mind. That's as simple as it gets.

A piece that comes into mind for me though, is that your wife might say that you were procrastinating, and that's where the definition breaks down for me because there's an internal judgment ve

What if the world's #1 brain coach wrote a book that's better suited for someone else than you? The ProductivityCast crew puts Jim Kwik's Limitless under the microscope, and their verdict might save you 12 hours of listening time (or not! 😉). Today, we're doing a book review of Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life by Jim Kwik. (NOTE: We recorded this book review before Kwik published his latest edition, Limitless Expanded Edition (December 2025); however, at least for Ray, who had a chance to read the latest version, his opinions shared in this episode haven't changed.)

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/142 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 Limitless from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | Limitless by Jim Kwik

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Limitless by Jim Kwik

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

In this BookCast installment, the ProductivityCast team dissects Jim Kwik's bestselling Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life. The panel explores the book's four-part framework — Free Your Mind, Limitless Mindset, Motivation, and Methods — and debates its value for different audience segments.

Timestamps

TimeTopic[00:00]Introduction & Book Overview — The hosts frame the BookCast format and introduce Limitless and Jim Kwik's background[04:30]First Impressions & Accessibility — The panel shares initial reactions, debating the book's entry-level tone and pop-culture framing[09:00]The Book as a Motivational Survey — Ray argues the book's strength lies in its motivational arc and broad survey of productivity concepts (Pomodoro, flow, mindset)[16:00]Pros & Cons Deep Dive — Discussion of the audiobook's bonus content, the book's resource page, repetitive self-promotion, and inconsistent acronym usage[23:00]Oversimplification & False Promises — Art raises concerns about "superhero" framing and the risk of leaving beginners feeling oversold and underserved[30:00]Amazon Ratings vs. Real-World Value — The hosts unpack the 4.7-star, 12,500-review score and what it actually signals about the book's audience[36:00]Who Should (and Shouldn't) Read This — Final recommendations: beginners benefit; experienced practitioners should go directly to the Kwik Brain podcast

📚 Resources Mentioned

Books Referenced

Limitless by Jim Kwik (the featured book)

Getting Things Done by David Allen

The 8th Habit by Dr. Stephen Covey

Mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck

Work Clean by Dan Charnas

Works by Dr. Edward de Bono (including Six Thinking Hats)

People Mentioned

Jim Kwik — Author & brain coach

Dr. Carol Dweck — Mindset researcher

Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi — Flow theory

Dr. Edward de Bono — Lateral thinking

Mel Robbins — Guest on Kwik Brain podcast

Dr. Michael Breus — Guest on Kwik Brain podcast

Dr. Brené Brown — Referenced for comparison

Anthony Robbins — Referenced for comparison

Stan Lee — Referenced re: Kwik's Marvel relationship

Tools & Resources

Kwik Brain podcast by Jim Kwik

Limitless book resources page

Limitless audiobook (available in full on YouTube at time of recording)

The 10-Day Kwik Start Plan (included at the back of the book)

Raw Text Transcript

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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Note: Parts of this automated transcript mixed up Francis and Art 🤪, so definitely listen to the audio to note who said what.

Voiceover: Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a more fulfilling, productive life?

Voiceover: Then you've come to the right place.

Voiceover: Welcome to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity.

Voiceover: Here are your hosts, Ray Sidney Smith and Augusto Pinault with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond: Welcome back, everybody, to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity.

Raymond: I'm Ray Sidney Smith.

Augusto: And I'm Augusto Pinaud.

Francis: I'm Francis Wade.

Francis: And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond: Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode of ProductivityCast.

Raymond: Today, we are going to be doing one of our book cast series.

Raymond: Basically, we're reading and discussing books that we think are of interest to the productivity community.

Raymond: And we're somewhat reviewing them for folks so that they can know whether or not they'd be worth picking up.

Raymond: And today, we're going to be discussing Limitless, Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life by Jim Quick.

Raymond: And so a little bit about the author and then a little bit about the book, and then we will get into our discussion.

Raymond: So Jim Quick, from his own website's bio, says,

Raymond: For the past three decades, Jim taught his learning techniques to students from universities such as NYU, Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, and Singularity,

Raymond: as well as executives and employees from companies such as Nike, GE, Zappos, SpaceX, and Virgin to get the most out of work and life.

Raymond: He started out as, quote unquote, the boy with the broken brain, and over the past 30 years has been teaching all of these various methods for helping people, quote unquote, upgrade their brains.

Raymond: The book itself from the Amazon description says, quote, Jim Quick, the world's number one brain coach, has written the owner's manual for mental expansion and brain fitness.

Raymond: Limitless gives people the ability to accomplish more, more productivity, more transformation, more personal success and business achievement by changing their mindset, motivation, and methods.

Raymond: So those are the three M's that he talks about in the book.

Raymond: And I won't read the entire description here, but that's kind of the general gist of the book in essence.

Raymond: So what I want to do today is I want to talk about kind of three different components here.

Raymond: One is covering the key points.

Raymond: What are the things that stood out for you in terms of the book?

Raymond: And then we'll talk about the pros and cons of the book and some of the key takeaways that you had from reading the book.

Raymond: And then finally, would you recommend or not recommend this book?

Raymond: And why?

Raymond: That is to whom and why?

Raymond: So let's start off with kind of the overview of the book.

Raymond: The book itself is broken up into four different parts.

Raymond: The free your mind.

Raymond: And this is really, I think, his opus on overcoming the reality that somehow you have a limited brain.

Raymond: You have some kind of limitations.

Raymond: How to kind of unwrap that component and think expansively.

Raymond: Then part two, which is the limitless mindset.

Raymond: Then part three, which is limitless motivation.

Raymond: And then part four, which is limitless methods.

Raymond: Basically, he goes from the what to the why to the how.

Raymond: And among amongst those pieces, he gives little tidbits along the way.

Raymond: What did you think about the book generally?

Raymond: What were those key points throughout the book that that stood out for you all?

Art: I I didn't actually read the book.

Art: I used the audio book version of it, which made it a little bit.

Art: I don't know if I want to say more challenging.

Art: The overall sense I got from the book is that this this is a title that if you have never done any personal exploration into improving your productivity.

Art: This is about as entry level as you get.

Art: There's a lot of classic tropes, classic comments, classic nuggets of wisdom that are honestly every place that are consolidated into the book.

Art: I was a little put off by some of the framing of some of the content.

Art: Specifically, you know, how you can do anything.

Art: You can master anything.

Art: You can use 100 percent of your brain.

Art: Stuff that we know through, you know, tried and true testing isn't accurate.

Art: And it actually creates.

Art: It can create a situation for somebody who's trying to get into improving their own productivity that they feel oversold when they try when they they listen to a lot of this stuff.

Art: And there's key things.

Art: And I know I'm fumbling with the explanation on this a little bit, but he'll go through a chapter and then he ends the chapter with here's the quick action.

Art: Do this.

Art: I'll use an example one.

Art: He has a section on memory and he's talking about, you know, improving your memory and things like that.

Art: And he ends with the quick action.

Art: Memorize someone's phone number.

Art: And that's the takeaway from the chapter.

Art: And I listen to that.

Art: I'm like, OK, I've listened to for this for quite a period of time now.

Art: And you have just told me to memorize a phone number, which apparently was my problem to listen to the chapter in the first place.

Art: Because if I can do that,...

We are thrilled to announce that ProductivityCast is officially relaunching on April 6th! We have missed our community and are so excited to get back to our regular publishing schedule. We have a wealth of all-new topics prepared and plenty of fresh insights to discuss regarding the world of personal productivity.To ensure you don’t miss our return, please take a moment to check your favorite podcast app. While seeing this update means you are likely already connected with us, we recommend verifying that you are properly subscribed and that your notification and auto-download settings are turned on. This ensures our new episodes will be waiting for you the moment they arrive. We truly look forward to being back in your ears and sharing this next chapter with you!

Today on ProductivityCast we’re going to be talking about stepping away from getting things done so you can review and reflect, and then get back to getting things done better. It’s halfway through the year and so it’s a good time to discuss the mid-year review.

Today, the ProductivityCast team talks about terminology, that is, what are the terms that we use in the personal productivity space? And why is there so much confusion around those particular words that we use?

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/140 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 Defining Personal Productivity from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | Defining Personal Productivity

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Defining Personal Productivity

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

Raw Text Transcript | Defining Personal Productivity

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

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17Welcome back, everybody to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:23I'm Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:24I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:25And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode. Today, we are going to be talking about terminology. That is, what are the terms that we use in the personal productivity world, and really, why there is so much confusion around those particular words that we use the importance of them. And then we'll talk about some of the terms that we all have defined over time. Some words, we've created some terms, or phrases we've created, and why. And then, of course, what we can do to make this a little bit more useful for everybody. And so let's start off with why is this important? What's the importance of the productivity terminology, the personal productivity, terminology that we use every day,

Augusto Pinaud 1:11when, when I begin working into personal productivity and researching into practice, personal productivity, one of the things that surprised me was the definition that most people have off time. Mostly because the definition has nothing to do with time and everything to do with scarcity. Actually, if you pull a dictionary, the definition that most people have of time is actually the definition of viscosity. So as you look and begin from the wrong definition, to build personal productivity, the only thing you can do is build a rock model. You know, when you start with wrong assumptions, it's hard to build something that actually works. And that works for you. And that is the problem. And that happened was so many of the definitions plus invented work that some experts for color in some way are so people who study to spend time and study and decide to create to define things that it makes sense on the sale of the book that they're trying to do, but not necessarily on the definitions that people manage. And all that create. Over the long term is confusion.

Francis Wade 2:28I think it's an unavoidable confusion because we are talking about psychological objects, not physical objects. And psychological objects have a history to them. They change over time. And they're they're made up and they are, they're very dependent on Lang on the language that you happen to be speaking in. We had a conversation off air about German language, German, and how words get made up all the time. And that's very easy to do when you're talking about intangible psychological objects. It's harder to do when you're talking about a tree, which you know, a tree today is pretty much the same tree as it was million years ago. But something like insomnia is a pretty recently made up word, because like 100 years old, and the way we use it obviously, is very different than people thought about insomnia 100 years ago. So a word like time when Weinstein came along and led us to think very differently about time. And before clocks were invented in this 12 or 1300s. People thought very differently about time then also. So as we create these words, they allow us to do different things. They help us in some ways, they hold us back and others. But the truth is that the meanings keep changing. And the fact that they keep changing, meaning that we have to pay attention to them, if we want to use them to, for example, make improvements in our individual lives, we don't have a choice. This is like a moving target. Bunch of moving targets.

Art Gelwicks 4:11Yeah, to meet the definition, debate falls into the same realm as in rules for games. If you're not playing by the same rules, you're not going to know what the objectives are, you're not going to accomplish or achieve the common goals. So if you use a parallel, say American football, if everybody does not know or agree to what a touchdown means, then anybody can run around saying they scored a touchdown. There's a common definition, there is an agreed upon standard of measure. And that's what so many definitions provide is that standardized concept of measure and unfortunately, within the productivity space, that seems to be one of the sponginess things that we have is getting everybody to agree on And what definitions actually are. And there's two things that I run into all the time. And I've caught myself doing it. And I have to correct when I do it as well. One is I miss identification of definitions, applying the wrong definition for something, because that's what we think it means. But we're not 100%. Sure. The other one, and I almost want to say it's a little bit more insidious is the adaptation of definitions to support a particular model, platform, agenda, whatever you want to say, to put something into place, so that it goes Oh, see, because productivity is x, my stuff is accurate as why? Well, that's assuming that everybody agrees that x is what productivity is, and I don't believe that's the case. And so many, so many situations. So having a common definition for things that is, I don't want to say globally, agreed upon, but as closely commonly agreed upon as possible, really makes this even approachable. When we start to look at improving people's productivity and efficiency.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 6:15I somewhat agree. And I think that what you're talking about there, art is probably why I have so many terms of art that I have created for all kinds of personal productivity situations, except that mine was built out of necessity, not out of building a model, and then choosing to shove a square peg into a round hole, it was, oh, this thing that I'm doing needs for me to define it. So I can explain it to others. And so it became a just a need to be able to create something to contain that new thought, that new method process or whatnot. And so I'm hopefully doing it on the opposite side of what you're talking about, which is I'm not, I'm not creating something and then trying to pigeonhole these pieces into it. But really choosing to embrace the, the term because it helps it's helpful in being able to explain it to others, I also find that my biggest challenge with personal productivity terminology is that we don't know whose term we're using, when we talk about any given term. If someone says to me, something I know like a time demand, I'm very clear, in the sense that I know that that came from a certain Francis Wade. And so if we go ahead and then say to me, Oh, well, a time demand is something else, not the one that I know is the term or the phrase created by Francis that I'm lost. And we don't have that kind of contextual framework. Right now, in the personal productivity community, people will use certain things like task or to do or even personal productivity, but they haven't really given us the foundation for what they mean by that. And when we enter into conversation, we're not in the appropriate context, you're talking about time blocking, or time boxing, or any of those other terms that are kind of loose, they can be defined many different ways. We're talking past each other, because you may think of it as being something very different than I think of it as being frequently, you know, we use the methodology getting things done. If we all were to define what getting things done well is today, we'd all have different definitions. And that is because we take pieces from the methodology. And I find that to also be somewhat confusing for people, when we then take that from the kind of macro level, have a methodology and when we bleed it down to the very individual pieces. Methods are incredibly difficult to, quote unquote, define because they are by nature, instructional. And so when we, when we try to give terms to things, they end up becoming confusing for people, because if I say GTD, or I say weekly review, or if I say next action, those three things are unique. Only one of them, by definition, will be useful to you, right? Because getting things done, or GTD is going to be a method and instruction, weekly review, same thing. Maybe you can define it in a in a core way. But it's still going to be confusing without giving you step by step instructions....

In this week’s episode, the ProductivityCast team debated subjective versus objective time as commentary on the article, “My Fixation on Time Management Almost Broke Me.”Thanks to Brian C. for the recommended reading! (See https://www.personalproductivity.club/posts/14785370.)

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/139 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 ProductivityCast - Subjective versus Objective Time from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | ProductivityCast - Subjective versus Objective Time

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | ProductivityCast - Subjective versus Objective Time

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

Is Time Management Really “Real”, Or Is It Just a Misnomer? | by Francis Wade | 2Time Labs | Medium

Victim Mentality: Causes, Symptoms, and More

The Impact of Temporal Schemata: Understanding When Individuals Entrain Versus Resist or Create Temporal Structure | Academy of Management Review 

Ramit Sethi

The R Project for Statistical Computing 

Raw Text Transcript | ProductivityCast - Subjective versus Objective Time

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

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17Welcome back, everybody to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:23I'm Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:24I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:25And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to ProductivityCast. Welcome to our listeners. Today, we are going to be talking about objective versus subjective time. And we will be trying to objectively thinking about whether or not it actually even exists. So, for instance, do you want to open this up with regard to this article. So basically, this is an article from hbr.org. And actually, Brian Clark in personal productivity club had brought this to my attention. And the article is my fixation on time management almost broke me by Abby J. Ship. She is a PhD researcher at Texas Christian University. And she has a PhD in organizational behavior from University of North Carolina. And so her research focuses on the subjective and psychological experience of time, including what she's quoting here as the trajectories of work experiences fit satisfaction and burnout, for example, and the nature of mental time travel and attention, and how individual views of time impact performance, well being and coordination in organizations. And so very interesting area of research that she does. Francis, can you open us up in terms of what Dr. Ship talks about? In this article?

Francis Wade 1:36The topic of the article is my fixation on time management almost broke me. So it's a bit click Beatty, in the sense that you're thinking that she's talking about what everyone is talking about the respect to time management. But those of us who are in the know, you know, that you probably would want to what version of time management is she talking about? And how did it break her. So just in the way this article starts, I'm just gonna talk about the start for a moment. She's define time management in a particular way. She's claimed that the way that she relates to time management broke her. And she's, in a way blaming time management. And I think there's huge problems just with that she gets them to other more realistic things in the latter part of the article, but the context of it, I don't know if the, you know, you write articles, and then the editor decides what's the sexy part that will draw people in? Well, the sexy part that drew people in through the title is just way off base. And why well, I wrote an article can time be managed, and really looked at whether or not this is a reality or a construct in language. And I came away with the latter. So for her to go this far down the road without defining time management is a huge problem for those of us who care, both definitions like this and why they matter.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:02Yeah. So I think about this from the perspective that what she's really saying is that because she became hyperbolic with regard to her own use of time management methods, right? She she basically had this obtuse view that she could do more and more and more not hitting upper limit, and or have unhealthy behavioral interventions, and then presume that those are time management. I just, this is where I have I struggled with her lead up to it, which is that there is this sense, and I think it's an unhealthy sense that many of us have, and I don't think she's out of the ordinary here. I think there there are other folks who are highly productivity minded, ourselves included, who get to a point, and we feel productive, and we think, well, we can be more productive, we could do, we could do that much more, and then it becomes unhealthy. And that actually drives us to spend more time on trying to iron out these small inefficiencies potentially, or small in effectiveness components of our world. And that ends up spending more time and being more deleterious to our outcomes and to our health and not so I get that I understand the argument, but that is not because of the time management methods themselves. That is a that is a psychological behavioral component, not an issue of the methodologies or the technologies themselves. Anyone else agree or disagree?

Art Gelwicks 4:33But should the methodologies take that into consideration? No,

Raymond Sidney-Smith 4:37I don't think so. Like okay, so Jerry Seinfeld is supposed to be the progenitor of the don't break the chain, time management methodology, where you cross off the items on the calendar in a mechanism to chain together and therefore create momentum around getting something done. Why is it his responsibility to then take into account all of the various psychological capabilities that we have and limitations that we have, when it comes to this, when, in reality, he just proffered what he does. He didn't say, there's some great psychological underpinning here, he didn't say there was some great, you know, amount of, of, you know, grand, whatever. He just basically said, This is what I do, it works for me. And it was taken and run with it. You know, and many other people have now talked about it about him, because he's a famous comedian, and so on and so forth. So like, I just don't see the the opportunity there for him to have given this underpinning, you know, he didn't write a book about it, he didn't do anything. But you know, what, don't break the chain helps. How many 1000s of people every year, get things done?

Art Gelwicks 5:44Is there any reason to not do it, though? I mean, if you have the opportunity to take consideration of the subjective parts of how you're executing your productivity into consideration and compensate for them adjust or at least be prepared for them, does that not inherently make a better system for yourself? I mean, I think about things like you know, when you have something on your list that you're going to do, and you know, it's going to take you two, three hours to do it. And it's something you hate to do. You know, it's going to feel like it takes forever to get that completed. Well, that's perception. It has nothing to do with how long it actually takes it to get done. But it might, because if you don't want to do it, who says you're going to do it at your maximum speed, your maximum level of productivity, the odds are extremely good, you're not. So failing to take that into consideration, at least personally, sets us up in situations where I can understand the struggle that she's talking about. I don't agree with everything in the article, but I do understand the concept and the struggle that she's talking about. Where's the cap? I mean, we started talking about that at the beginning. Where's the top end of productivity? If I feel like I'm hitting? No, I'm hitting everything on my task list. And I'm getting my stuff done. And my projects are getting turned in? Should I stop there? Time management methodologies and productivity, you know? Everybody running around right now will go well, no, you need to work harder. You need to work harder, you can work harder, you're getting everything done. That means you can do more. And I can understand why that would break somebody. I can totally get that. Because there is no sense as to where does this thing go off the rails? And without that taken into consideration? Yeah, there isn't a methodology out there that says you've done enough stop. If there is, I don't know about it. I'd love to hear it if there is but I don't know of one that says, Yeah, you're good.

Unknown Speaker 7:55And I don't think I agree with you there. I don't think there is one and it is an issue that you find into a lot of people, okay? Where, and I found that especially in people who

...

Today, we’re releasing this episode which was recording live at the Task Management & Time Blocking Summit 2023 stage. The theme of the conference is “One Size Doesn’t Fit All” and so the ProductivityCast team spent time discussing in front of the live audience what our thoughts are on challenges of one-size-fits-all and some thoughts of solving for it. Enjoy!

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/138 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 One Size Doesn’t Fit All - ProductivityCast Live from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | One Size Doesn’t Fit All - ProductivityCast Live

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | One Size Doesn’t Fit All - ProductivityCast Live

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

Remember the Milk

CrossPlatform podcast

Raw Text Transcript | One Size Doesn’t Fit All - ProductivityCast Live

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 0:00Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place. ProductivityCast the weekly show about all things productivity, here are your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and a Gousto pinout with Francis Wade and art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17Welcome back, everybody to ProductivityCast the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:22I'm Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:23I'm Francis Wade.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:24And Art Gelwicks is with us somewhere in spirit. But he'll be back hopefully, and with us shortly. Welcome, gentlemen. And welcome to you all, listening, live, watching live or listening after the fact to the podcast feed. We are here live at the task management and time blocking virtual summit 2023. And the theme for this summit is one size doesn't fit all. And what Francis kind of positioned us to do here on this episode was to talk about really the the ideas behind what does one size fits all mean? Does it really make a difference in our productivity? Can we think about this in a more, I think fluid and dynamic way. And I'm going to play devil's advocate a little bit in this Episode Episode to talk about really the, the fine line between efficiency and effectiveness, when we think about one size fits all methods, tools, and otherwise. And so what do we want to get started here, let's let's talk about one size fits all being a problem, because we're consistently trying to do more. And as Francis talks about task volume, for instance, do you want to kind of talk to us about the number of projects and commitments that you typically talk about with regard to how one size fit all one size fits all really becomes a problem for folks, when they're attempting to do more and more

Francis Wade 1:48Sure, is that we're greedy. It's, we fill our we fill our plates in terms of capacity. So we do as much as we can do, and we grow as much as we can grow. And when we get to a particular level, we still want more. So even if we pick up a new app and learn some new techniques and become more productive, because we can manage more tasks, eventually, or capacity runs out, because we just keep adding more tasks, we're really until eventually, we coupled and start to experience problems all over again, it's just human nature, the more we do can do, the more we want to do. And it's just a matter of wanting, just being aspirational, just being positive. Having a vision for yourself, that is beyond your grasp. wanting more out of life, wanting to grow, wanting to learn wanting to contribute, wanting to serve, you know, there's always all of these commitments, they sound great, because we are just wired that way. But what they all translate to in the world of task management in terms of what goes in your to do less than what goes in your calendar is one word more. So given that we always want more, there is no single set of techniques, and there's no single tool that will ever serve us forever. It serves us up to a point. And then we want more. And we either give up wanting more, which some people do, or we change our approach. So that more becomes possible human nature.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 3:32And I would probably put a different lens on this, I would filter that response to the fact that we are in various different cultures and societies that really require a lot of us today, you know, there, there is just a different sense of the world than at the turn of the last century, or even the turn of the prior century to that. There's just so much more expected of us. And we are required to be connected to all of our past mistakes in a lot of ways. And that creates a lot of shame and regret for humans just generally. And I think the idea of one size fits all ends up being problematic for folks who do have any sense of their past, coming back to bother them haunt them, so to speak. And I don't mean this in terms of like doing something bad. I mean, in terms of like just capturing your existing task volume, and recognizing that there's a backlog that at its very nature causes a an emotional response that has its own effects on us. And I think that can be very, very troublesome for folks. So we have task volume. I'm going to kind of twist us to the other side to this, which is kind of Devil's advocacy, right out the gate, which is to talk about the fact that we have lots of solutions in the world and In which the one size fits all works. And maybe not perfectly, but maybe enough, I'll use the example of all in one productivity tools like an outlook outlook positions itself as the one tool you need for being able to manage communications. I think to some extent Microsoft Teams is starting to encroach in that space a bit. But But focusing on Outlook, right, we've got email, we've got calendar, we've got task management. At some point, it did a journaling type of tool in there as well, there was kind of a note taking capacity, you have add ins that extend on that. So it's customizable, and it's extensible, make the argument that that one size fits all strategy does not work for organizations.

Art Gelwicks 5:49No, I'll jump in there and say it absolutely doesn't work for organizations. And it's exactly what organizations need. And here's why I say that. Because organizational implementation of those types of one size fits all solutions are not about the users using them. They're about what it takes to maintain them, and what it costs to deploy them. And what it costs to license them. That's the the objective. And that's the purpose, it has nothing to do with whether or not it's the best option for the end users, because they're rarely taken into consideration for that. So when you have a tool like Outlook, where Microsoft will tell you that it will do everything, including slicing bread, it's not, they don't really care that, well, it's not the best option for doing task management. And it's not the best option for handling your calendar. Typically, what you'll see retroactively is they'll try to shoehorn functionality into it, to get it closer to those applications that actually do those very things. So, in a corporate environment, it's extremely rare to actually get an application that's really good at the singular job it's supposed to do, because then you wind up with a huge number of applications to to maintain license and ultimately pay for

Augusto Pinaud 7:06to go by little back to what Francis was saying. Us, you know, there are two problems, yes. Our task, you know, we go into task management or learning to manage our mess, because that overwhelm, okay, because we want more and more and more. And what is little say, in the world as you work with somebody is there is a moment in which you need to start looking for better. And what I mean by that is, as Francis was saying, and I will agree, there is a moment that you reach capacity. And when you reach capacity, what are you going to do, okay, as to this day, I have not been able to find the upgrade. Okay. So if somebody knows how to do an upgrade, please let me know. Okay, but since I cannot do an upgrade, this is what it is. So the moment you reach capacity, is when this game gets interesting, because that's where the geeking and the time management and the story comes into place. Because now is how we are going to get better task, okay, on how we are going to maximize that resources, those resources that we have, so we can really be productive. That is where things that I have mentioned before, in other episodes of this podcast, that do not do list, what is the things that you need to stop doing? What is what you need to teach others to do when I work with families for task management? Okay. How do you teach your kids how to use these tools? Because it's very interesting are my kids are 14 and 10. Okay, they can play with Windows, Mac, iPads, and Chromebooks. No problem, okay, switch between one or the other. But somehow, we parents, you know, don't give them the tools that we know they're going to need. Now do I think my kid will use not to be or to do is when they get to their professional life? Maybe not. But this is a great time to teach him, hey,...

In a post entitled, Hyper-Scheduling, David Sparks (a/k/a MacSparky) writes about his method of time blocking on a granular level. This week, the ProductivityCast team provides their commentary, challenges and methods on this concept of hyper-scheduling, which will hopefully spark ideas on how you can better manage your time-based work.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/137 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.)

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If you'd like to continue discussing Hyper-Scheduling: Commentary on MacSparky's Granular Time Blocking Method from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | Hyper-Scheduling: Commentary on MacSparky's Granular Time Blocking Method

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | Hyper-Scheduling: Commentary on MacSparky's Granular Time Blocking Method

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

Hyper-scheduling - MacSparky 

Unschedule

How to Use the Unschedule - Video Tutorial 

Google Assistant Time-Based Actions:

Events - https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/7678386?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid

Reminders - https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/9387035?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid

Timers - https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7028899?hl=en

Raw Text Transcript | Hyper-Scheduling: Commentary on MacSparky's Granular Time Blocking Method

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

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17Welcome back, everybody to ProductivityCast the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud 0:23I'm Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade 0:24I'm Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks 0:25And I'm Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26Welcome, gentlemen. And welcome to our listeners to this episode, today, we are going to be talking about the calendar and really how to utilize the calendar to be more effective, really related to David Sparks. And some of you may know him as Mac Sparky at macsparky.com and the Mac Power Users podcast, he has been writing about something that he calls hyper-scheduling since 2018. And I thought we would actually tackle this topic in terms of just covering what he is really talking about in his series of articles around this. And so in 2018, he wrote this article that he said he was experimenting over the last month, in essence doing more deliberate scheduling of his time. And so really, what it looks like is a an explanation of what is time blocking the idea of being able to put blocks of time in your schedule. In his particular case, he's calling it hyper-scheduling, I believe, because he is identifying more granular times where he's doing things. So instead of say, large swaths of time for the day, he's putting smaller and smaller blocks of time in the calendar for particular activities. And he defines various blocks. And he gives you the opportunity to be able to think about your own world in terms of what those smaller, more granular blocks could be, for purposes of having a schedule that you can fall in line with, as you make your way through the day. And the idea here, at least as I understand it, is that he's giving himself the leeway to change things around. But it's just a little bit more structure. He does this the night before. So instead of the morning of he does this the night before, and he gives some mechanics and so forth. He's written five or six articles about this over the last three years. And so I thought it'd be helpful for us to walk through through some of these pieces. And he's written some clarifying components of this, you know, some of the feedback he's gotten and his responses to those as well. And so let's just start off with that explanation kind of under our belt, right? This is kind of like a variant, or his his take on time blocking? What do you think about this take on time blocking? And what parts are good? What parts do you feel like, have an opportunity for improvement,

Francis Wade 2:56he talks about capturing the schedule, initially on PayPal. And I've noticed, the first thing is that I changed my time blocking depending on how busy I am. So I'm in a hyper busy period this week, because I have a conference coming up that I'm in charge of, or hosting. And every minute of every day is valuable. And you know, I'm swapping things in and swapping things out and pushing things to next week. I'm in that mode where you're trying to conserve as much time as possible before a deadline hits. And I normally would keep my schedule on my calendar, but the ad on my digital calendar. But the idea of going into my calendar and doing it and dragging around and dropping, and then going through all the different steps that it takes. For me to get to the calendar I want seems like a lot of work. So when I'm in this face, I just made a paper calendar, I started to write things down because in a minute, I'm done as opposed to 10 minutes, or 15. And it made me think he's onto something. First thing he talks about the use of a digital PayPal entry and I forget the name you guys can you guys are experts in that area, you can speak to that. But it struck me that the interface and how easy it is to do time blocking has a lot to do with what kind of time blocking you do. Because I'm probably going to go back to using the computer using Google Calendar or schedule an escape path after this week. But interesting, I think there's different approaches depending on how busy you are and how much spare time you have. And he may be hinting at that.

Art Gelwicks 4:41I liked the idea of that level of scheduling. I just don't think it's practical, at least not not in my world. I mean, it's it's nice to be able to go through and say, you know this will take 15 This will take 25 But I just don't think that works in most cases you spent So much time monkeying around with your schedule, that you almost get to a point where you're not getting anything done. I mean, I like the idea, the bigger idea of time blocking where you say, Okay, I'm going to allocate, you know, two hours to work on this today, and set that in your schedule. But as you dig down more granular, you're getting really to the point of a checklist with times assigned to it in my book. And that's, I think there's a law of diminishing returns, that starts to creep into this fairly quickly.

Raymond Sidney-Smith 5:32I think this is highly dependent upon the type of work that you do, and the expectations you have of the other people around you. And so if you are delegating work, if you are managing people, and if you're working in any collaborative environment, many of these things are going to break down if you don't have a lot of control over your own time. And so in my particular world, where I do have a lot of control over my time, like I have almost exclusive control over my work day. And so the idea that I give control, so to speak to others to schedule, time in my calendar, or those kinds of things, you know, I've latitude to reject calendar events, move them around all of those kinds of things. And that does give me the ability to do some variant of time blocking if I wanted to. And so I can see this working for me, if I if I liked the idea of my calendar being filled with things other than meetings. And I think just because as a GTD er, I have a tendency to think about things from a list perspective, and not from a calendar perspective. You know, calendars are for meetings in my world, and then those things that do need to be done in a timeframe. And that means that there's actually more in the calendar than one might think. But at the same time, I do tend to use those calendar anchors for prompting me to look at my lists for what can be done. So in essence, the, the time blocking in my world is actually a context, not a set of tasks. And that sounds to me a little bit about what David Sparks is talking about here, where he has these, there triggers for contexts of things to do, and there's a melange there, have, you know, he's got a little bit of, you know, go do X, go do Y, those kinds of things, you know, routine based items. But for me, I like the idea of saying at this particular time, I'm going to transition and, you know, shift my modality from one to the next. And when I'm doing that, this is the thing I'm going to work on next. So when I look at the calendar, I can see oh, right, in two hours, I'm going to be shifting gears to this chunk of work. And that gives me the ability to start kind of moving myself in that direction, which I think can be helpful.

Art Gelwicks 8:00What's too small, what size time block is too little at work to 15

Francis Wade 8:06minute blocks. But again, only in times when you have no discretionary time. Like for example, if I'm in a situation where I have three meetings, which are almost back to back, and I only have a half an hour between each one, then I'm going to not only have the energy,...