In this week's episode, I share with you my top 5 tips on becoming better at time management and productivity. 

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The Working With Podcast 15

In this week’s episode of the working with podcast, I share with you my top five tips on becoming better at time management and productivity. 

Hello and welcome to episode 15 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week, rather than answering a question, I want to share with you my top five tips on better time management and greater productivity. 

I decided to do this because on a recent trawl through Twitter I discovered there are a lot of people who are struggling with managing their time and feel incredibly overwhelmed by the amount of work they have to do. 

Before we do get started though, I would like to ask if you have any questions about time management, productivity, goal planning or self-development, please drop me a line either via email, [email protected] or DM me on Facebook or Twitter. 

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

Okay, Carl, so you say you know a lot about time management and productivity, what are your top 5 tips for better time management and productivity?

Okay, so none of these tips involves a deep knowledge or understanding of the science or reasoning behind them. They are just common sense tricks that have been proven to work time and time again no matter what personality type you are. 

So here goes with tip number 1:

Spend 10 mins planning your big three tasks for the day evening before. 

Now there is a lot written about this and I’ve seen a lot of debates about whether this is best done in the morning or evening. I have tried both methods and have found that doing a 10 minute planning session the night before helps me to get a better night’s sleep and I can start the morning by getting straight in to my work. 

The thing about planning what three things you WILL do today is no matter how much work you have to do, every day you are moving forward on the important things. With no plan, we often do the things that have the least resistance—you know the easiest task to do. But if we make a definite plan, either written down or as part of a list on your phone or computer, you are much more likely to do it. If that list is small, or it does not have more than 3 things on it, you are always likely to focus on it and get it done. 

I call these “today’s Objectives” and they are the only things on my “today’s Objectives” list. It’s the first list I open in a morning when I sit down to work and I try to keep the list to only two things. Sometimes, I will have three, but I never let it have more than three things. I’ve found through experience, that three things is the maximum I can do without feeling overwhelmed.