How flexible are you? That’s what we’re looking at this week. 

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Script | 363

Hello, and welcome to episode 363 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

You may have heard this week that my Time Sector System is five years old. And to celebrate, I updated the whole course. 

Now, before I start to update a course, I go into Evernote and review all the comments I have collected from students and see if there are any common issues or difficulties that I could improve or explain better. 

The Time Sector System works. It’s based on timeless principles that have been used by some of the most productive people who have ever lived. As with all solid principles, there needs to be a degree of flexibility to accommodate the different ways we all work and the type of work we do.

The way authors, for example, will protect three to four hours a day for writing might not be practical for a customer support assistant or a manager managing a team of twenty salespeople. Similarly, an architect will work differently from a doctor in an emergency room. 

Yet, there are still some timeless principles that work no matter what role you have. 

For example, it doesn’t matter how much you have to do if you don’t have the time to do it. Makes sense, right? 

I could decide to write my next book today. That’s the easy part. The difficult part is finding the time to write the book. I’m not sure how many hours I spent writing Your Time, Your Way, but from the first day I sat down to begin writing the first draft to when it was published in May last year, it was three years and I know every week, I spend at least ten hours on it— so roughly 2,000 hours. 

Given that each week only has 168 hours, it would not be possible to write a book in a week. 

One of the most productive companies I worked for was an advertising agency in Korea. The manager, Patrick, was smart. He realised that for his team to get the campaigns completed on time, he had to protect the time of his copywriters and graphic designers. They needed quiet, undisturbed time to do their work. 

Yet the account managers and social media planners needed to be talking with each other and external companies to arrange space for the billboards, and media companies. 

The account managers and planners generally had a meeting with each other each day. 

The creative team only had two meetings per week. The Monday planning meeting where they planned out the work to be completed that week and the Friday morning team meeting where everything was discussed. 

This meant the creatives (as they were called) had the quiet time to focus on their work. 

In the four years I worked with that team, I never recall a time where they missed a deadline or even felt under pressure to complete a campaign. I’m sure there were occasions when they were under pressure—clients can be very demanding—but it was never noticeable. 

What made this team so productive was that each person knew the objectives for the week. They knew what needed to be finished and ensured that they had the space and time to get on and complete the work. Patrick, as the boss, protected the time of his team. 

He knew if he was constantly asking his creatives for updates, he would be slowing them down. He trusted his team and they trusted him. If they had a difficulty, or discovered that a piece of work would take longer to complete than initially anticipated, they could go to Patrick and tell him. 

This comes back to something I learned from Brian Tracy—one of the world’s best self-development teachers—that if you want to be successful at anything, you first need to establish what you need to do to be successful at it. 

Once you know that, you can dedicate enough time to doing that and eliminating everything else. 

There’s the famous advice that Warren Buffett gives about managing your work. Write down the twenty-five things you feel you should do, then put a star next to the five most important, delete the rest and focus all your time and effort on completing those five. 

So, where does flexibility come into this?

Well, if you have an overflowing inbox with emails and messages piling up by the hour, you are constantly interrupted by people asking you questions about this and that, and you have no idea what needs to be completed this week, you lose all flexibility. 

There’s too much for your brain to decide what to work on next. You’re overloaded and stress and anxiety will freeze you—slowing you down even further. 

Take a copywriter working for Patrick. She knew what needed to be completed that week—it was agreed at the Monday meeting—and she had the freedom and flexibility to get on and do the work in her own way. 

And that all came down to knowing from the beginning of the week what was required. Next week wasn’t important. That could be discussed at the Friday meeting. 

And that’s one of the strongest concepts of the Time Sector System. Only focus on what needs to be done this week and not worry about next week until you do your weekly planning session at the end of the week. 

We need to be flexible enough to modify things for the way we work. One aspect of the Time Sector System I recommend is working with projects. 

Task managers, or todo lists, are not the best places to manage projects. Projects are information hubs. There’s likely to be emails, plans, meetings, deadlines and what is called conditional tasks—where something cannot be completed until something else is completed first.

Then there’s likely to be files and documents being worked on which need to be accessed from time to time. 

Projects are best managed in your notes apps. Notes apps have greater flexibility to store all this information. You can also create checklists which do not remove completed tasks which makes it easier to quickly see what has been completed and what remains to be done. 

I recommend that you add a single task in your task manager saying “Work on project X” and connect that task to your project note. Some people mentioned that this seems cumbersome if the task is simply to follow up with someone. 

I agree, and in these situations, I would suggest adding the follow-up task to your task manager.

Be flexible. 

Similarly, some projects are simple and easy to do. I have a project right now to get the terrace outside the office ready for the spring. When I come to do that project, the most effective way to complete it would be to schedule an afternoon on my calendar to go outside with the jet washer and get on and do it. 

I do not need to create a project note for this. I just need to find some time on my calendar. This “project” doesn’t even need to be on my task list. It’s two or three hours protected on my calendar when it’s not raining. 

The principle to work from, is if something needs doing, then it will require time. So the questions is when will you do it? 

Once you know what needs to be done, and are clear about what the desired outcome is, and you know when you will do it, the how will largely take care of itself. And it’s how flexibility is your best friend. 

Another area where I found people struggle is with the daily planning session. Daily planning is a critical part of being more focused and productive. When you have a plan for the day, you more likely to get the right things done. With no plan, you’ll end up drifting through the day doing this and that and getting caught up in everyone else’s crises and urgencies. 

But not accomplishing very much. 

Daily planning is five to ten minutes at the end of the day, deciding what you need to do the next day. Doing it the evening before allows you to let go of the day so you can relax and enjoy the evening. 

Sounds simple, right?

So why do so many people struggle to do it? Exhaustion. They are exhausted at the end of the day and cannot bring themselves to do it, so it doesn’t get done. 

And guess what happens the next day? They drift and get caught up in everyone else’s work. And what does that do to them? It leaves them exhausted at the end of the day. 

However, some people are early birds and like to wake up early. If you are an early bird, planning in the morning before the day begins works perfectly well. 

This is another example of being flexible. Work to the way you work. 

I remember when I used to wake up at 5:00 am (I did that for 18 months), and I would plan my day as part of my morning routine. It was only when waking up at 5:00 am became unsustainable after my coaching programme grew and I needed to be doing coaching sessions late into the evening that I stopped and started doing my daily planning in the evening after I finished my coaching sessions. 

Different circumstances require different approaches, yet the principles remain. Plan your week so you know what’s important at a higher level, then give yourself five to ten minutes to adjust your plan each day to allow for the unknowns that will inevitably have come in as the week progresses. 

Protect time for doing your important work. If you need to prepare a proposal for an important client and you know it will require three to four hours to complete, then protect that time on your calendar and don’t let anyone steal it from you. 

If you allow someone steal that time from you and you find yourself under enormous time pressure at the end of the week, whose fault is that? 

There was something I once heard Brian Tracy say and that was “take responsibility”. He was talking in terms of your life—take responsibility for your life. You can easily adopt that same approach for your time. Take responsibility for it. Be ruthless, yet flexible when you need to be so you can get your important work done. 

I’m reminded of the East Asian saying: “be like bamboo”. It’s strong, yet flexible enough to adapt to the wind, the snow and the rain and still not break. That should be your approach to your management of time. Be strong—say no when necessary—yet be flexible enough to adapt to the conditions. 

I hope you found this helpful. Thank you for listening. 

Don’t forget, if you want to build a time management system like bamboo, then the new Time Sector System course is now available. The link is in the show notes. And if you are already enrolled, this is a free update for you and it’s waiting for you in your Learning Centre dashboard. 

It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week. 

This week, I’m exploring where much of our overwhelm comes from and how to sharpen up your inbox processing. 

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Script | 362

Hello, and welcome to episode 362 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

How often do you feel overwhelmed? It’s a good question to ask because some of that overwhelm is caused by what has been called “open loops” or in other words stuff to do that has not been looked at to see what is involved. 

A lot of this will come from your inboxes. We throw all sorts of things in there without much thought about what needs to be done. With our email and messaging inboxes, we don’t have any control over what arrives in there—that’s out of our control. 

The issue here is we have it collected, and that’s often a weight off our minds, but there’s a sense of anxiety because we don’t know for sure what needs to be done and how long it will take us to do it. 

If we are not processing what we collected frequently and correctly, then there is a gaping hole in the system that needs filling in. If not, there will be a lot of things that need to be done that gets missed. And that then leads to a distrust in your system which creates its own set of issues. 

This week’s question is how to develop the right habits and processes to make sure that our inboxes are cleared and what gets into our system is clear, actionable and with realistic timelines.

So, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice, for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Stephen. Stephen asks, Hi Carl, could you walk us through how to best clear a task manager’s inbox as well as some “best practices” for clearing email and other inboxes?

Hi Stephen, yes I can and thank you for your question. 

This is a place that I feel I must tread very carefully. On the one hand I want to encourage you to stop trying to remember everything in your head and to externalise it so you reduce the stress of trying to remember everything. 

On the other hand, I also want to encourage you to maintain a clean and tight task management system. By that I mean that your task manager only contains genuine things you either must or should do and anything you think you’d like to do can be put into your notes app. 

Email and messaging services are reasonably straightforward. 

There’s a two step process. The first is to clear the inboxes. This part is about speed. The faster you can do that the better. 

When processing your inboxes here you want to get into the habit of asking the questions: What is it and what do I need to do about it?

An email rom a customer asking for some information about their account, for example, would give you the answers; it’s an email from a customer that requires me to answer a question. 

So, it’s actionable and you would then send it to your Action This Day folder for action later in the day. 

The temptation is to deal with it immediately. It’s from a customer! I must reply immediately. I get it. I know there’s a sense that anything from a customer must be dealt with instantly. 

Unfortunately, doing so will create challenges for you in the long-term. The first is you set an expectation. Instantly replying to a customer means they expect you to reply instantly next time too. And next time may not be as convenient as it is now. You might be at your son’s sports day, or having a romantic lunch with your partner. 

It’s not very romantic if you have to pause the conversation while you respond to your customer is it?

The second challenge is it rarely ever is just one. It’s often several emails or messages like that. Each one will likely take you five to ten minutes. Just six of those and you’ve eaten up forty-five minutes of your processing time. What about the six other emails you need to clear from your inbox. 

This is how inboxes fill up and become overwhelming. If you have sixty to seventy emails in your inbox you should be able to clear those in around twenty to twenty-five minutes. Stopping and dealing with individual emails because you think it will only take a few minutes to deal with them lengthens the processing time, which means you won’t have time to clear it. 

Your customers are in the same place as you. Swamped with stuff to do with a shortage of time to do it. The chances are they’re going to hate you for responding instantly. Now you’ve given them more work to do. 

And let’s get real here, if something’s genuinely urgent, they’re not going to email you are they? They’ll call you. 

The second part of this process is to set aside time each day for dealing with your actionable messages. 

This is where you open up your email’s Action This Day folder and begin with the oldest one and work you way down the list. It’s at this point you will thank yourself for not responding to all those quick and easy emails. 

If all you have in your Action This Day folder are emails that require a lot of thinking and work, it’ll be a painful experience. If instead you have a wide variety of emails to deal with you build momentum and and plough through them quickly. 

And that’s it. A two step process. Through out the day, between sessions of work, clear your inbox by asking two simple questions: What is it, what do I need to do with it. If you need to reply, read or review something, throw it into your action this day folder. 

Then later in the day, settle down and go through your Action This Day folder and clear as many as you can. As long as you are starting with the oldest first, you’ll never be very far behind. 

Next up is your tasks inbox. 

This is a little different from your messages or email inbox because you control what’s put there. Unlike emails and messages where you have no control. You cannot control who is sending messages to you. 

The challenge here is to be ruthless about what gets into your system. 

Throughout the day, it’s easy to throw all sorts of things into this inbox. You may have heard someone recommend a book that sounded interesting, so you throw that in there. You may have seen someone with a colourful umbrella and you decide it’s time for you to get yourself one. 

Then there are all those ideas about redesigning your kitchen, or cleaning up your notes app or a thought about getting some Christmas cards printed with your name on them--I’m not sure if that’s still a thing. 

Your inbox is the gateway to your system, so it’s perfectly fine to throw anything and everything in there. Where you want to be ruthless is what you allow into your system. 

Processing your task manager’s inbox again has a few questions.

The first is: what is it? Then, what do you need to do with it? 

For example, you may have realised that your passport expires in the next ten months. So you have a task in there that says “renew passport”.

That’s good. But is it enough. I know if I come to a task that says renew passport I’m going to ignore it. Why? Because behind that simple “renew passport” is a lot of stuff I don’t know about.

The last time I renewed my passport was ten years ago. The passport office will undoubtedly changed the system since then. So what’s the real task here?

It’s to find out what I need to renew my passport. 

So, I would change the task to “find out what I need to renew my passport” and then decide when I will do that. Do I need to do it this week? Next week? Or perhaps next month? 

And that’s the third question, when will I do it? 

Once decided, I drop it into its appropriate folder. 

You will often have some obvious tasks in there too. It could be something like sending a quote to a prospective customer. So you add a task “send quote to Drax Enterprises into your inbox. 

Yet, is it that simple?

This might be a potential big multi-million dollar contract. One you need to discuss with your boss first. So, what is the task? It’s to talk with your boss about what discounts to offer. So you can change the task to “Discuss with boss Drax Enterprises quotation”, add a date you will do it—perhaps tomorrow—and place the task into your This Week folder. 

The danger of not rewriting tasks with the real next step is you will ignore the task because you are unclear about what really needs to happen next. When you process your inbox, you have an opportunity to get clear about what needs to happen next. 

Once you know that, you will be less likely to skip it. 

I know this all sounds complex, but if you step back and look what you are doing, you are asking yourself three simple questions.

What is it? What do I need to do with it? And when will I do it? 

I’ve found that if you apply these questions every time you are in an inbox, it quickly becomes natural. 

You also get better at triaging your task manager’s inbox. This helps you to keep your task manager clean and tight. The less you allow in there, the more focused you will be and much less susceptible to picking the easy tasks leaving yourself with only the more time consuming ones later in the day. (Something you want to reverse—remember “Eat The Frog”)

And that’s it, Stephen. Keep things simple, run through the questions and be ruthless about what gets into your task management system. 

Thank you for your question and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me no to wish you all a very very productive week. 

This year, the Time Sector System is five years old! For thousands of people it has changed their relationship with tasks and time in so many positive ways. Today’s question concerns the basics of the Time Sector System and its philosophy. 

You can subscribe to this podcast on:

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Script | 361

Hello, and welcome to episode 361 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

I still remember the day that the Time Sector concept came to me. I was walking to the gym one sunny afternoon and was reflecting on my overwhelming task list waiting for me at home. I remember thinking to myself that all these tasks hitting me day after day was not sustainable. 

I was organised and knew where everything was, but I felt trapped in a cycle of never-ending tasks and emails. Whenever I feel this way about anything I always tell myself that there must be a better way. 

And then it hit me. 

I think it was the word “unsustainable”. The number of emails I was getting was never going to reduce. It was going to increase. The amount of work I had to do was equally never going to reduce. At some point I would reach breaking point. 

It wasn’t the work itself. It was time. I just didn’t have enough time. That was the clue. 

You cannot control the number of tasks, messages, and emails you receive. It’s a random number. Yet, the one constant—a constant not controlled by you or me, but by science, and in particular physics, is time. Time is our constraint. 

If I could allocate time for doing the different categories of work I had to do and decide when to do the tasks in those categories, it would not matter how much work I had coming in. Everything would get done in due course. 

And that was the seed that sprouted into the Time Sector System five years ago. 

So, with the history told, it’s time now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Elaine. Elaine asks, “Hi Carl, I recently came across one of your videos where you talk about the Time Sector System. Could you explain its philosophy and how it differs from other time management systems?” 

Hi Elaine,

Thank you for your question. 

The thinking behind the Time Sector System is that we are limited not by what we can do—we can do a lot—but by how much time we have to do things.

We need to eat, sleep and move (exercise), at our basic level. On top of that we likely have family commitments, school runs, doctor appointments and friends that need seeing. Then we have our work to do. 

The limiting factor is time. It’s fixed. We only get 24 hours a day. 

Now you can manipulate time by hiring people to do stuff for you. For example, you may be fortunate to be able to afford a nanny to take care of your kids when you are at work. Or, you may be able to hire an assistant. But no matter how you manipulate time, it’s still only 24 hours. 

So the philosophy behind the Time Sector System is, it’s not about what you have to do, it’s about when you will do it. After all, that’s the only thing you have control over. 

At a wider level, that means organising your tasks into tasks that need to be done this week, next week, this month, next month or long-term or on hold. 

When you divide your tasks up into when you will do them you narrow down the decisions you need to make on a day to day basis. When a new task comes in, you only need three questions:

What is it?

What do I need to do to complete it?

When will I do it?

So, for example, imagine I get a notification from my health insurance provider informing me I need to book myself in for a medical check-up. 

What is it? It’s a request for me to make an appointment with the doctor.

What do I need to do? I need to make an appointment with the doctor.

When am I going to do it? That depends. 

It depends, in my case, on when is convenient for my wife. We go together to the clinic for our annual check-up. In Korea it’s a six-hour ordeal, some turn it into a family outing. So, before I can make the appointment I need to consult with my wife. 

So, back to question 2. What do I need to do? Consult with my wife. So, there’s the task. When do I need to do it? This week would be good because if I don’t it will sink to the bottom of my list/ So. I choose today when I see my wife. 

When you are processing your inbox, that’s the process. What is it? What do I need to do? When am I going to do it?

Another example might be I have a project that is due for completion at the end of the month. As I am looking at the project, I know what it is—it’s a project. What do I need to do? I need to talk with my colleague about how she is getting on with the graphics for the landing page. That will give me an estimate on when I can finish the landing page. So, when am I going to do it? I’ll send her a message on Monday, so I can add that task to my This week folder. 

It could be that as I return from a business trip, I notice my passport will expire in eight month’s time. Now, I know the government won’t be reminding me that my passport needs renewing, so it’s something I need to do. 

What is it: It’s a passport renewal.

What do I need to do? I’m not sure. The last time I renewed my passport was nine years ago. The system’s probably changed since then. What can I do about that? Go to the government’s website and find out the process. 

Okay, I need to do some research. When will I do it? I’m busy this week, so I can drop the task: find out how to renew my passport into my next week folder. 

I don’t need to add a date to it at this stage because I will be doing a weekly planning session on Saturday and I decide then. 

It’s brilliantly simple, and takes next to no time to develop the habit of asking these three questions. 

There are a few other little things you can do to make this seamless. 

For instance, have separate folders for your routines and critical recurring tasks. Routines are those little things that just need to be done. Watering the house plants, cleaning actionable emails, and basic admin tasks.

Your Recurring Critical tasks are those tasks that come from your Areas of Focus and your core work. I won’t go into the Areas of Focus here. These are your life level tasks such as planning your exercise, staying in touch with family and friends and self improvement. 

Your core work tasks are the tasks you are employed to do. At a basic level, these would be things like talking with customers if you’re a salesperson, preparing materials and teaching if you are a teacher, etc. 

What you do is pull out the tasks you need to perform each day, week or month, and se them to recur as frequently as they need to. 

Another one is when you first adopt the Time Sector System, the temptation will be to throw everything into your This Week and Next Week folders. This results in them filling up which causes overwhelm. 

When you first begin using the Time Sector System, you want to be learning what is realistic and what is not. This involves monitoring what you can and cannot get done each week. 

For example, I know my limit, when I begin the week, is thirty tasks in my This Week folder. Any more than that and I won’t be completing the excess. This does not include my routines and Recurring Critical Tasks. 

If I am to get my most important work done each week, anything more than thirty tasks in my This Week folder and something will break. 

It will take you a few weeks to find your limit. 

And then it all comes down to your daily planning.

While you can plan the week, you will find that you are picking up tasks that need to be done in the week you are in. Before you end your day, you should look at your calendar for the next day. Look to see how much time you have available to do your tasks. 

You’re going to have a very challenging day if you have seven hours of meetings and thirty tasks to complete. Something’s not going to get done. 

It’s during the daily Planning Sequence that you plan out a realistic day. Perhaps you can move some meetings, or reduce your task list. 

And to finish, you select your two most important tasks, flag them and make sure they are your must-do tasks. 

And that’s it. 

As I go through this, it sounds complex, but when you are doing it, it is not. 

New tasks go through the three questions—what is it? What do I need to do? When will I do it? And you can then move those tasks from your inbox to their appropriate folder. 

Then, on a daily basis, you check to see how much time you have for tasks, based on how many meetings you have, and create a prioritised, realistic list. 

At the end of the week, you get to look at your other folders—next week, this month, next month and long-term and on hold to see what can be brought forward to your this week folder. 

The good news is, this approach, helps you to delete tasks that no longer need to be done. 

Now what about projects? If they are not in your task manager, where are they? 

You manage your projects from your notes app. That could be Apple Notes, Evernote, Notion, OneNote or any kind of notes app that allows you to create links to documents, articles, images and emails. 

You notes is a natural place to manage your projects. After all, a project is a big hairy thing that needs managing. You will likely have documents and meeting notes to keep together. 

So, keep them together in a notes app. That way, when you’re working on a project you’re not distracted by all the little, easy tasks you could be doing. You can get yourself focused on the project and work from your project notes. 

All you then need is a single task in your task manager telling you to work on a specific project. Depending on what tools you are using, you will also likely be able to create a link directly from the task to the project note. 

Now the good news. If you are curious about the Time Sector System, I am in the process of updating the online course. It’s the fifth anniversary and it’s a big update. We are in the final editing stage and I hope to get launch the update in the next ten to fourteen days. 

I’ve also done a lot of YouTube videos on this—you can see the playlist on my YouTube channel. 

Thank you Elaine for your question and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week. 

Is self-discipline overrated? That’s what we’re looking at this week. 

You can subscribe to this podcast on:

Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin

The Ultimate Productivity Workshop

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Subscribe to my Substack 

Take The NEW COD Course

The Working With… Weekly Newsletter

Carl Pullein Learning Centre

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The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Script | 360

Hello, and welcome to episode 360 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

We hear a lot about self-discipline and how we should develop our discipline to achieve our goals or become more productive. But is this true? 

Self-discipline is hard—more so these days with all the instant gratification distractions—and anything that is hard is going to be tough to do consistently. Whether you are trying to accomplish a goal or become better organised, if you rely on self-discipline to get you through there’s going to be a good chance you will fail. 

There are some people who thrive on self-discipline. The most famous being David Goggins—he’s a tough cookie. Pain, discipline and a never die mindset are what he appears to live for. But, people with that mindset are rare and you don’t need it. 

There is a better way. It’s not easy—nothing worthwhile ever is—but with practice, a little determination, persistence, and consistency, you soon find you don’t need discipline to achieve these things. 

Now, before we get to the question, Here’s a little reminder about this week’s Ultimate Productivity Workshop. 

If you have not yet registered, you can still do so, there’s a link in the show notes or you can visit my website—carlpullein.com— to register. 

The workshop will cover how to transition from an unsustainable task-based productivity system to a more sustainable time-based one. I will show you how to manage your work, how to time block effectively and how to prioritise your work so you know you are always working on the right things at the right time. 

For those of you already registered, I will be sending out the first workbook in the next day or two so keep an eye out for that. I will also include the joining instructions. 

If you want a less hectic and overwhelming life, then this workshop is a must. It’s your chance to create a time management and productivity system that works for you. 

Okay, on with the show and that means it’s time for me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Ryan. Ryan asks, hi Carl, do you have any tips on getting better with self-discipline? I’ve never been very good at being disciplined but as I get older, I feel I need to do better at this.

Hi Ryan, Thank you for your question. 

I’ve always found the concept of “living a disciplined life” interesting. You see, the word discipline suggests “punishment” of some kind. When we’re at school if we do something wrong, we are “disciplined”. That was my first introduction to the word. (Or perhaps my parents disciplining me for whatever reason.) 

And yet, when we talk about living a “disciplined life” it’s often spoken of in positive terms. Yet, there’s that underlying sense that it’s bad. 

I recently wrote about Charles Aznavour, the prolific French singer/songwriter. Aznavour wrote over a 1,000 songs and recorded many more. He lived until he was 94, exercised every day and was still touring when he passed away in 2018. 

In interviews he was frequently asked about his productivity and how he created such a disciplined life. Yet Aznavour never thought he was disciplined. 

He woke early every day, and spent his mornings writing songs. For him it wasn’t discipline, it was his passion, his purpose. He couldn’t wait to get started each day. And on those rare days he wasn’t in the mood to write, he still wrote. 

Why? He didn’t need to. He wrote because that was what he did. It was a habit. 

Have you ever tried starting your day without your morning coffee or not brushing your teeth? How did you feel? Probably uncomfortable and little self-conscious. 

You don’t need discipline to brush your teeth or make your coffee in the morning do you? It’s just what you do. 

And there is where you will find the answer to living with a little more discipline. Don’t think of it as discipline. It isn’t. It’s just what you do. 

Take planning your day at the end of the day. 

Last night, I spent three hours in a recording studio recording the audiobook of Your Time Your Way. That was after a full day recording and editing videos. I was exhausted. My voice was ragged. Yet, after getting home, I got my Franklin Planner (Yes, I’m still using it), sat on the sofa and planned today. 

There was no discipline involved. I also had a great excuse. I’d been on the go since 8:30 am and it was 11:45 pm. I could easily have skipped it. Yet I didn’t.

Why? Because that is what I do in the evening. I give myself five to ten minutes to plan the day. 

I love the quote from Jim Rohn: “each day you get to choose between two pains. The pain of regret or the pain of discipline”.

I know what happens if I don’t plan the day—the next day starts out of control. I have no focus and anything loud and “urgent” becomes the priority—even when it isn’t a priority. 

Most people’s problems with time management and productivity is because they skip the five to ten minutes planning the day. If you don’t have a plan for the day, you will end up on someone else’s plan and they don’t care about how you feel—a bit harsh, I know, but it’s true. 

For most things you don’t need discipline. It’s a choice. Do you scroll social media or read a book? Do you sit on the sofa watching TV or go out for a walk? Do you eat a chocolate bar or a banana? That’s nothing to do with discipline. It’s a choice.

Reading a book is easy. Get a physical book, not an ebook, and place it on the coffee table near your favourite armchair or sofa. Then give yourself ten minutes each day to sit and read it. If you place a bookmark in the book, you can see the bookmark gradually falling to the bottom (the end of the book). 

And as the book is on your coffee table, you will see it every time you sit down.

More often than not, you will read more than ten minutes. 

Ultimately, those people you think are living a “disciplined life” just have certain habits. Getting up early and writing a journal is a habit. It doesn’t need discipline if it’s a habit. 

My wife writes her journal every evening before she goes to bed. She uses Day One, the digital journal, and writes on her laptop. She sits on the sofa, opens her laptop and writes. Some days she’ll only write for five minutes. Other days she’ll write of over an hour. For her she sees it as winding down at the end of the day. Absolutely no discipline is involved. 

It would be strange not seeing her on the sofa writing a journal.

Yet for many sitting down to write a journal requires discipline. Ask my wife if writing her journal requires discipline and she’ll laugh at you. 

You don’t need discipline if you have the right habits. 

How do you develop habits. Well, firstly I would recommend you read James Clear’s Atomic Habits. It’s a brilliant book. 

Secondly, identify the habit you want to develop. I always suggest your morning routines are a good place to e to start. These are the easiest kind of habits to develop. What would you like to do first thing in the morning? 

You may want to read, meditate, exercise or write a journal. Pick one thing. 

For example, if you choose to write a journal, start by making yourself your favourite morning drink, then sit down somewhere comfortable and begin writing. Give yourself five to ten minutes to write. 

You can help yourself by putting your journal next to your kettle or coffee maker before you go to bed. That way when you wake up, turn on the kettle you see your journal there waiting for you. 

Something James Clear mentions in Atomic Habits is to reduce the friction. This is akin to those who wish to exercise in the morning, putting out their exercise clothes next to their bed before going to bed. It reduces the friction of choosing what to wear. I think of this as minimising the risk of finding an excuse. 

These are all great tips. Yet, the disciplined life that Charles Aznavour lived didn’t need tricks. It appeared disciplined, yet it was just how he lived his life. And that’s the goal here; to build daily habits that are effortless because that is what you do. 

Most people eat their breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same time? Why? It’s because that’s what they do. When I commuted to the office, I would catch the 8:05 bus each morning. I knew what time to leave the house because I knew how long it would take to walk to the bus stop. It was simply what I did. 

I should give you one little tip I’ve used in the past. If, say, I want to read a book each evening but find myself watching TV instead, what I will do is tell myself I must read for ten minutes before rewarding myself with turning on the TV.

The advantage of this little trick is you still get to do the thing you want to do—watch TV—but you also get to do the other thing you struggle doing. Eventually, it just becomes a habit. Watching TV without reading becomes uncomfortable. 

So there you go, Ryan. It’s not really about being disciplined. It’s more about choosing what you want to do and carrying it through. 

Your calendar can help you there. Remember the saying, what goes on your calendar gets done. With this, the key is if you don’t or cannot do something you must remove it from your calendar. That act of moving it from your calendar reminds you about you haven’t done. It acts a good incentive. 

If, for example, you schedule going for a walk after lunch, but keep skipping it, because you are removing it every day, you will begin asking yourself what’s wrong and re-assess things. Perhaps you will be more consistent if you go for your walk in the morning or evening. 

I hope that has helped, Ryan. Think about what you want to do, when you want to do it and do it. Sooner rather later it will be just what you do. 

Don’t forget to get yourself registered for the Ultimate Productivity Workshop. The first session is on Friday evening, it will be something you will never regret. 

Thank you for your question Ryan and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very very productive week. 

In this week’s episode, what’s the best way to manage projects? 

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Script | 359

Hello, and welcome to episode 359 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

From time to time, something comes along that sounds great when first described but then turns nasty. 

In the productivity world, that something is Getting Things Done and in particular the definition of what a project is. 

This is not the fault of David Allen, Getting Things Done’s author; this is how his description of a project has been horribly misinterpreted. 

At its essence, Getting Things Done is about categorising your work into contexts. That could be work you can do on your computer or phone. In your office or at home. It is, and never was about “projects”. Projects, at best, are a sideshow. A simple way to organise your work. Nothing more.

Yet for some reason, a few early readers misunderstood GTD, wrote about it and now there’s a whole generation of people believing anything that involves two steps or more is a project and must be organised as such. 

And there, is the source of overwhelm, time wasted to organising stuff instead of doing stuff and huge backlogs of things to do.

Before we get to the heart of today’s podcast, it’s important that I clear this misunderstanding up. 

If you ever bought one the fantastic GTD setup guides that was, and may still be, sold on the GTD website, you will notice that whatever task manager you are using, you set up the lists, folders or projects (depending on which task manager you are using) as contexts. Those contexts usually related to people, places or things. For example, your home, or office. Your computer, printer or car. Or your partner, boss or colleagues. 

You then dropped any task related to these contexts into its appropriate context. 

Your projects were organised in a file folder system that you kept in a filing cabinet. Current projects—the things you were working on this week or month—were kept on or near your desk for quick access. 

In those folders you kept all the details of the project. Notes, documents, outlines, etc. Perhaps you also had a checklist of what needed to happen next. 

Today, you can use your digital note app for that purpose. 

The key thing about GTD was it was task context driven—ie, you could only do something if you were in the right place, with the right tool and with the right people. It was never about projects. 

So, now you have the background, I think it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Benjamin. Benjamin asks, How do you best manage projects using your task manager, notes app, and calendar together?

Hi Benjamin, thank you for your question. 

I think the first place to start is to avoid looking for a way to treat any new input as a project. Most things are not. 

Theoretically, this podcast is a project. I need to choose the question, write the script, set up the studio, record the podcast, edit it, then publish it and hand it over to the my marketing manager for sharing on social media. 

That’s seven steps. Well within the definition of a GTD project. Yet, if I were to treat each podcast episode as a project, I’d waste hours just organising it. 

A podcast episode is something I do every week. It’s not a project. It’s just part of my work. 

Usually, on Thursday I will write the script. That means I go into my list of questions which is in a single note in Evernote, select a question, then begin writing the script. 

Then on Sunday morning, after my coaching calls have finished, I set up my little studio, and record the podcast. Once recorded, I edit it and then publish it. 

The only tasks on my task manager are a task on Thursday that reminds me I need to write my script and a task on Sunday that reminds me to record the podcast. Two tasks. That’s it. 

I don’t need a project folder for any of this. 

There is one other thing I do that relates to your question, Benjamin. I have a two hour writing block on my calendar on a Thursday for writing the script and a two hour block on Sunday for recording it. 

So, there in essence you have all three tools working together. 

If you want to simplify things I would suggest looking at how you define a project. 

In my eyes, a project is something unique, something you either have not done before or rarely ever do. Typical projects would be:

Moving house

Buying a new car

Planning a vacation

Setting up a new payroll system

Starting a business

Finding a new job

Doing the work you are employed to do is not a project—well not unless you are a project manager.

An advertising agency isn’t going to treat each new client as a “project”. An advertising agency creates advertising campaigns every day. 

The graphic designer has a list of designs they are working on and when they begin their day they only need to choose which campaign they will work on that day. 

Designing is their job. 

The same goes for the copywriter. When they begin their day they choose which campaign to work on and that is dictated by when the next client meeting is.

What is the work you are employed to do? 

A teacher doesn’t treat each new class as a project. They have a process or system for preparing their materials and when the teaching time begins they teach. 

It’s possible that a lot of your work does require a place to keep meeting notes, plans and links to documents you may be working on. That’s what your notes app is for. 

Your notes app has replaced the filing cabinet today. Filing cabinets were static—they never moved. Your digital notes app can go with you wherever you go. 

If you do have any projects, that is where the information and resources go. 

All your task manager needs to do is tell you what you should be working on today. 

You may have tasks like:

Work on new payroll system project

Finish proposal for Universal Exports

Follow up Mr Oddjob at Auric Enterprises

Clear Action This Day folder

Your calendar tells you if your task list for the day is realistic. If you have six hours of meetings today and you plan to work on your payroll project and finish the proposal for Universal Exports, you’re likely being a little ambitious. 

You calendar tells you if you have time to do the things you’d like to do that day. 

You can go further, though and use your calendar to protect time for doing your key work. 

If, for example, you want to (or need to) spend two hours working on the Universal Exports proposal, then you can block time on your calendar for doing that work. There might be some time sensitivity involved there. Getting the proposal to Universal Exports might be the most important thing you need to do that day. That would be flagged in your task manager as a non-negotiable task that day. 

The daily and weekly planning is where I would decide what I will be working on that day or week. 

The planning sessions are where you can step back and look at the bigger landscape of what you have to do and decide where you will put your time that day. 

Right now, I do have a project. I am in the process of recording the audiobook version of Your Time Your Way. This is not something I can sit down a real off as a single task. 

I need to book the recording studio and sound engineer and my voice will only last for around 3 hours before I begin sounding like an out of tune frog. 

The only thing I need in my system each week is when I need to be at the recording studio. Currently that is Wednesday nights at 7:30. We record until 10:30 pm. I don’t need a task for any of that. That’s on my calendar. 

The next day, the sound engineer sends me the recordings and I go through them to make sure everything sounds right. I have a task in my task manager that pops up each Thursday reminding me to review that previous day’s recordings. 

I have a project folder for the Your Time, Your Way book. That contains all my notes, meeting notes and any information I may need. Right now, though, I don’t need to reference that. I just need to turn up at the recording studio on Wednesday nights, record the audiobook and review the recordings the next day. 

The important thing is not to confuse your core work with projects. Core work is the work you are employed to do. Designers design, teachers teach, managers manage, truck drivers drive a truck. 

All you need is a list of tasks you want to complete each day and get on and complete as many as you can. The majority of those tasks will be related to your core work.

A project, on the other hand, is something unique, often outside of your core work, that needs additional time for doing. You may need to utilise your unique skills to complete that project, you may only have a small say in the project. Either way, on a day to day basis, the only thing you need to decide is what your next task is and do that. 

This year is the fifth anniversary of the Time Sector System course. I am currently in the process of re-recording and updating that course. 

Is it a project or just part of my core work. 

I know from experience that if I treat it as a project things will get complicated. 

Yet, I’ve create many courses over the years. I know the process. 

For an update, it’s to review and update the course outline. Then schedule time on my calendar for recording and editing it. There will be some additional tasks related to marketing, but I am not there yet. I’m recording, so the driver is my calendar. 

Hopefully that has helped, Benjamin. The key is to simplify things as much as possible. Try to avoid creating projects and instead ask if there is a process you can follow. Most things you frequently do has a process. 

Processes speed everything up.

As the Formula 1 season is about to start, I’m reminded of one of the sports best leaders, Ross Brawn’s comment on running a team. 

The new car for the new season is never considered a project. It’s a process. There’s a time to begin work on the new car, there’s a time to test the new car, etc. Yet none of that is considered a project. Aerodynamicists do the aerodynamics. Engineers work on the chassis and engine and the logistics people work on the logistics. It’s what they do every day. 

Yet, building a new wind tunnel, or engineering factory, that would be a project. These “projects” are rare and need specialist inputs. 

Don’t forget, we’re two weeks away from the first Ultimate Productivity Workshop of 2025. This is your opportunity to take a live workshop with me where I help you to create and build your very own productivity system, A system that works for you. 

Thank you Benjamin for your question and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very very productive week. 

Where are you spending most of your time? Are you planning or doing? That’s what we are looking at this week. 

You can subscribe to this podcast on:

Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin

The Ultimate Productivity Workshop

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Subscribe to my Substack 

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Script | 358

Hello, and welcome to episode 358 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

Podcaster Chris Williamson has recently caused a bit of a stir in the productivity world with the phrase “the productivity rain dance”. Cal Newport picked this up and it’s something I’ve written and spoken about for many years. 

If you are obsessing about productivity tools—apps, techniques and systems—you’re not doing the work. You’re doing the productivity rain dance. It’s organising, planning and searching for new tools in the hope that somehow the work will get done. 

It won’t. And while you are wasting all that time planning, and playing, the work continues to pile up. 

This week’s question is linked to this in that it’s about tools and organising work and I hope, my answer will help you find the balance between collecting, organising and doing. 

Before I hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice for this week’s question, I’d like to mention that the first Ultimate Productivity Workshop of 2025 is coming. 

On Fridays 14th and 21st March I invite you to spend two hours with me learning how to create a time management and productivity system that’s focused on doing the work so you have time for the things you want time for. 

In the workshop, we will cover getting control of your calendar and task manager . Then in week two, I will show you some simple techniques to get control of, and more importantly, stay in control of your communications—email, Slack/Teams messages AND the all important daily and weekly planning sessions. 

Places are limited so, if you would like to develop a personal productivity system that is focused on doing rather than organising and planning, get yourself registered today. The link to register is in the show notes. 

Okay, back to this episode. Let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Alastair. Alastair asks, hi Carl. I recently came across your work and wonder how you avoid getting caught up in the wonderful world of productivity apps. I never seem to able to stick to anything and I know I am wasting time. 

 Hi Alastair, thank you for sending in your question. 

I’m not sure you are necessarily wasting time looking for the right tools. If you are at the start of your productivity journey, finding the right tools is inevitable and yes, it can be confusing. There are so many. 

However, there comes a point when you need to stop and settle down with a set of tools. 

Those tools are: A calendar, a notes app and a task manager. 

The good news is the built in tools that comes with your computer will do. You don’t need expensive subscriptions to so called AI enabled tools or collaborative project management tools. 

What are you trying to do when you decide it’s time to get organised and be “productive”? 

It’s not about getting more work done. That’s a bit of a misnomer about productivity. It’s about getting the important stuff done and eliminating the less important. 

Getting your kids up, dressed, fed and ready for school each morning is important at 7:30 am. Checking email and messages is not. There’s a time and place for those messages, but 7:30 am is not the time. 

The world we live in today has made communication incredible fast and easy. Forty years ago, the only forms of communication were letters and telephone calls. (Although some offices had fax machines too).

If you were not next to a telephone, no one could contact you. And if you were not in the office, you didn’t know what surprises were contained in the correspondence waiting for you. 

It was therefore easier to compartmentalise your days. Today, it’s much more difficult because you can be alerted to problems instantly, and those problems can derail your day very quickly. 

The challenge therefore is to be able to quickly sift through all the stuff coming at us and to decide what is important and what is not. 

When things are coming at us all day, they appear loud and urgent. But urgent is not necessarily important. 

If you have a thousand emails backlogged in your email system and your boss is demanding you send in your employee evaluations by the end of the week, your employee evaluations are the more important task. The backlog will have to wait. 

And let’s be honest, if someone’s been waiting three months for you to reply to their email they’re not going to be bothered if they have to wait a further week. 

If you consider that scenario for a moment, your productivity tools are not going to help you. 

The only thing you need to know is that writing your employee evaluations must be done. Shuffling that task around your productivity tools won’t do that for you. You are, in effect, procrastinating.

I like the analogy to the rain dance here. A rain dance is performed to persuade God or the gods to bring rain to water the crops. Yet, the dance doesn’t produce the rain. You can dance as much as you like, you can wear elaborate costumes and involve other people. None of that will give you what you want—water to feed the crops. 

You can download as many productivity tools as you like. You can organise your notes in such a way that finding stuff is quick and easy and you can spend hours curating your notes and tasks so they look pretty. Yet, none of that gets the work done. 

Doing the work is the only way the work will get done.

So, all you need each day is a list of things you have decided are important and you get done and do them. 

For that, you don’t need expensive apps. A single sheet of paper would do that. 

I’ve always found it interesting how productive people get their work done. The common thread is they do the work, not organise it. 

If you Google Albert Einstein’s desk you will see a mess. Papers and books strewn all over the place. If you search for Jeff Bezos’ desk from the early days of Amazon, you’ll see something very similar. 

These guys got a tremendous amount of work done without the need for clean and tidy systems. They got on with doing the work that mattered and cleaned up when they were finished. 

Sadly, unproductive people don’t achieve very much so we cannot see their workspaces, but I’ll bet they were beautifully neat and tidy with bookshelves of neatly organised books and papers lined up perfectly on their desks. 

A few years ago I got into watching YouTube videos of minimalist desk set ups. (Weirdly, these videos are still popular!). I remember at the time wondering how they ever got any work done. It must have taken hours to keep their workspace so clean. 

The key to all of this is knowing what is important and what is not. This is why I recommend doing two exercises before you begin developing any kind of system. 

The first is to establish what your areas of focus are. These eight areas around your family and relationships, career, finances, health and fitness, lifestyle and personal development are important because they define what is important to you as an individual. 

The next is to get clear what your core work is. This is the work you are employed to do and directly effects your promotional prospects and ultimately your income. 

Being quick to answer your phone, respond to a message or email or being on time to every meeting is not your core work. Well, not unless you work in customer support. 

Once you know what your areas of focus are and your core work is, you have a pre-defined set of priorities on which to base your decisions about what you should be doing each day. 

For example, one of my areas of focus related to my work (career) is to help as many people as I can become more productive and less stressed. To do that, I produce several pieces of content each week. 

Creating and publishing that content is always a priority for me. 

I don’t need a lot of tools to to do that. 

A calendar protects time each week for creating that content—I have twelve hours a week protected for this. 

I have a very disorganised list of content ideas in a single note in Evernote—a notes app I’ve been using for almost 16 years now. 

And, of course, I have an app for writing and producing that content. 

Are there better calendars, notes apps and writing tools out there? Possibly, but how much faster would I be able to create content with those new tools? Probably no faster because using them would be unfamiliar to me. 

The tools I use I’ve used for over ten years. I know them inside out and they are boring. And that’s good because I’m not tempted to organise them, or even look for new apps. They do the job I need them to do and I can focus on creating the content. 

If you want to become more productive and get the important things done on time every time, the only way you will do that is to do the work. There are no shortcuts and no productivity tool will do it for you. Only you can do that. 

Funny how none of those things requires you to add a task into a task manager. You just need to decide when you will do them and do them. 

So there you go, Alastair. Focus less on the tools and more on what you need to do to get the job done. You really don’t need elaborate apps, complex organisational structures or a minimalist desk. 

You just need time protected to get the work done. 

Thank you, Alastair for your question and thank you for listening. Don’t forget to get yourself registered for the Ultimate Productivity Workshop where will cover many of these concepts (and much more).

It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week. 

This week, why managing your time is better than managing tasks. 

You can subscribe to this podcast on:

Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

Subscribe to my Substack 

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Script | 357

Hello, and welcome to episode 356 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

There is a scene in the movie Apollo 13 where astronaut Ken Mattingley, played by Gary Sinese, is trying to find a way to power up the Command Service Module to bring the three in danger astronauts through the earth’s atmosphere and safely back to earth. 

All they had to play with was 16 amps; that’s it. Sixteen amps isn’t enough to boil a kettle. And we’re talking about life support systems and navigation that was critical to bring Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise back to earth safely.

In the scene, we see Ken Mattingley testing every switch in every possible combination so they do not exceed 16 amps . It’s painstaking; it takes a lot of time, but eventually, they devise a sequence that the astronauts can use to power up the command service module within the 16-amp limit.

We know that Apollo 13 landed, or splashed down, safely to earth after five days.

Each day, you, too, are dealing with a similar situation. You have a limited resource—time—and that’s it. You get the same 24 hours every day that everybody else gets. How you use that time is entirely up to you.

The problem is you don’t have 24 hours because some critical life support measures require some of that time, including sleep. If you don’t get enough sleep, that will have a subsequent effect on your performance that day; you won’t be operating at your most productive. 

This is one of the reasons why it is crucial to have a plan. No flight ever takes off without a flight plan. They know precisely how much weight they are carrying. They can estimate to some degree of accuracy the weight of the passengers, and they know precisely where they’re going and what weather conditions to expect.

Yet many people start their day without a plan; they turn up at work and email messages. Bosses, customers, and colleagues dictate what they do all day, and they end up exhausted, having felt they’ve done nothing important at all. And that will be very true. Well, not important to them. 

This week’s question is about getting control of your time. So, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Tina. Tina asks, Hi Carl, I am swamped with all the stuff I have to do at work and home. It’s never-ending and I don’t have time to do it all. Do you have any tips on getting control of everything?

Hi Tina, thank you for your question. 

There’s an issue when we focus on everything that we have to do. We forget that ultimately, whether we can or cannot do something will come back to time. Time is the limiting factor. 

There are other resources—money, ability, energy, etc but if you have all those resources, and you don’t have time, it’s not going to get done. 

Things get even more messy when we consider that as humans we are terrible at estimating how long something will take to do. There are too many variables. 

For instance, as I am writing this script, my wife is messaging me and Louis, my little dog, is looking at me expectantly, hoping I will give him his evening chewy stick early. 

When I began writing, I thought it would take me a couple of hours, I’ve already spent an hour on it and I am nowhere near finishing it. 

One place to start is to allocate what you have to do by when you will do it. This helps to reduce your daily lists which in turn reduces that sense of overwhelm. 

I recommend starting with a simple folder structure of:

This Week

Next Week

This Month

Next Month

Long-Term and on Hold. 

When something new comes in, ask yourself: What is it? What do I need to do and when can I do it? 

The questions what is it and what do I need to do will help you to classify the task. 

Classifying a task is helpful because it will allow you to group similar tasks together. 

For example, if you walk into your living room and notice the windows are looking dirty, you may decide to create a task to clean the windows. 

The next question is when will you do it? The best time to do this kind of task is when you do your other cleaning. 

Grouping similar tasks together work to prevent procrastination. 

When I was growing up, my grandmothers and my mother all had what they called “cleaning days”. This was a day, once a week when they did the big clean. Vacuuming, dusting and laundry. It was a non-negotiable part of their week. 

And if you think about it, you don’t pop out to the supermarket to buy food individually. It’s not like you run out of broccoli and go to the supermarket to buy only broccoli. You would add broccoli to your shopping list and buy it when you do your grocery shopping. 

Well, we can adopt the same principle here. 

Like most people, I get email every day. The problem is, you and I have no idea how many emails we will get. It’s a random number. This makes it practically impossible to know before the day starts what you will need to do. 

However, what you can do is have a set amount of time to deal with your actionable email each day. 

I have a process. Before the day starts I clear my inbox, filtering out the stuff I don’t need and archiving things I may need. The actionable email goes into an Action This Day folder in my email app and later in the day I dedicate an hour for clearing that folder. 

I have my Action This Day folder set up so the oldest email is at the top of the list and I start there. It doesn’t matter if I have fifty or eighty actionable emails. I give myself an hour work on it and once the hour is up I stop. 

I repeat this every day, so my emails are not backlogging. Most days I can clear them all, some days I cannot. But as I always begin with the oldest email, nobody will be waiting more than 24 hours for a reply. 

This means it really doesn’t matter how many messages I get each day. While I can’t predict how many I will get each day, I have been able to pin down how long I spend on it each day (around an hour and twenty minutes) and that’s it. 

Another thing you can do is to default all new tasks to next week, not this week. It’s tempting to throw everything into this week, but if everything goes into this week, you’re going to be swamped. 

Much of what we are asked to do doesn’t need to be done straight away. It can wait. The advantage of waiting is many things end up sorting themselves out. 

There’s a story about former Israel Prime Minister Yikzak Shamir, who would take every letter, memo and document he received and put it on a pile on a side table. He wouldn’t look at it for a week or ten days. 

When he did go through the pile, he found 90% of what he was being asked to sort out had sorted itself out and the remaining 10% needed his attention. 

Of course, today not touching something for a week to ten days might not be practical, but it does highlight another issue we find ourselves in—rushing to do something that if left alone will sort itself out. 

The final piece of this puzzle, is how you organise your day. This is where your calendar takes priority and where the time limit comes to play. 

We have twenty-four hours. From that we need to sleep, eat and take care of our personal hygiene. That’s going to take up around nine to ten hours of your day. So, in reality you have around fourteen hours to play with. 

Where will you do your most important work? This is where your calendar comes in. 

Most of us have meetings and often we have no control over when those will be. However, what you can do is block your calendar for doing your most important work. 

For example, you could protect two hours in the morning for doing your critical work. And then an hour in the afternoon for dealing with your communications—the action this day folder. 

That’s only three hours. If you’re working a typical eight hour day, that still leaves you with five hours for meetings snd other stuff that may need to be done. 

If you can consistently follow that practice, you’ll soon see a lot of that work that’s piling up getting done. 

One thing to keep in mind is the work will never stop. 

There’s a story that on Queen Elizabeth’s final day, she still had to deal with her official documents and messages. It’s likely you will too. Stuff to do will never stop coming. 

All you have are your resources and of those time is the most limited. The question is—how much time are you will to give to those tasks? 

So, Tina, the best advice I can give you is to sort your tasks by when you will do them. This week, next week, later this month or next month. 

From there, categorise your tasks into the type of work involved. That could be Writing time, communications, admin, chores etc. 

Then. Look at your calendar and see where you can protect time for doing that work. 

And that’s it. If you are consistent in following your calendar, you will find the right things are getting done on time and you’ll feel a lot less frazzled and overwhelmed. 

Thank you, Tina for your question and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all very very productive week. 

This week, Dr. Kourosh Dini returns to the podcast to discuss how we can ensure that the goals we set are achieved. 

Here's how you can learn more about Dr Dini's work.

Newsletter:

Should you take up journaling, and if you do, will it help you with your time management and productivity? That’s what we’re exploring this week. 

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Script | 355

Hello, and welcome to episode 355 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

This year is the 10th anniversary since I took up consistent journaling. And it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever taken up. 

Not only is it one of the most therapeutic things you can do, it’s also one of the best ways to organise your thoughts, work your way through problems and vent your anger towards those who really wind you up. 

Over the years, I’ve also found that journaling has helped me to achieve my goals because each day I am writing about how I am doing and if I find myself making excusing, the act of writing out my excuses exposes them for what they really are—excuses. 

So, this week, I’ve chosen a question related to journaling and I hope it will inspire you to invest in a quality notebook and pen and start doing it yourself. And if I can inspire just one of you to take it up and become a Samuel Pepys, I’ll be very happy. 

So, to kick ups off, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Tom. Tom asks, hi Carl, I’ve heard you talk about your journaling habit numerous times. Do you think writing a journal has helped or hindered your productivity? 

Hi Tom, thank you for your question. 

To answer your question directly, I can say with certainty that journaling has contributed to my overall productivity. 

To explain further, I write in my journal every morning, no matter where I am. And one of the things I always write down is my two objective tasks for the day. Those objectives are the two non-negotiable tasks for the day and by writing them down at the top of my journal entry, I have a way of ensuring I did them when I write my journal the next day, 

But more powerfully, writing them down each morning focuses my mind on what needs to be done and how and when I will do them. 

Those tasks are also in my task manager, but it’s the act of writing them out by hand that gives me the focus. 

Writing a journal is much more than being an aid to productivity. It’s also a form of therapy. 

Like most people, I feel frustrated, overwhelmed and stressed at times. Those feelings need an outlet. A negative way to do that is to get angry, shout, and scream. Sure, that blows off steam, but it also transfers your negative feelings to others—your colleagues and family. Not great. 

Instead, if you have a way to write about these things, you start to find ways to solve whatever the underlying issues are. Writing slows down your thinking, and if you were to step back and analyse why you sometimes feel stressed, frustrated and overwhelmed, it is because you feel—incorrectly—everything has to be done right now. 

That slowing down helps to bring back some perspective and you can decide when you will do something and what can be left until another day. 

When it comes to achieving your goals, a journal is perhaps the best way to track progress. It can also help you establish new, positive habits.

When I developed my morning routines around eight years ago, I chose to track them in my journal. I always draw a margin on left of the page, and I list out the six items I do as part of my morning routine: make coffee, wash face and teeth, drink lemon water, write my journal, clear my email inbox and do my shoulder stretches. 

I write them down at the top of my journal entry for the day in the margin. And, for the dopamine hit, I check them off too. 

I exercise in the late afternoon and, again, I will write out what I did in the margin of my journal. 

Now, I could spend a lot of money on habit-tracking apps, but with my journal, I’ve found no need. I have my record and can review it at any time. 

Over the years, I’ve been asked what I write about and if I use any prompts.

The answer is no. Well, apart from writing out my objectives for the day. 

Now, prompts can be helpful when you first start—you can think about them as those little stabilisers we put on kids’ bikes to help them learn to ride. Sooner or later you want to take them off so you can experience the freedom of riding freely. 

I write whatever’s on my mind that morning. If everything’s going great I write about that. If things are not so great I write about it and why I think things are not going as well as I want them to. I often find as I am writing about an issue, a solution begins to form in my mind and I will continue writing. 

If a task comes from that solution, I can put that in its appropriate place later. 

As a general rule, I will write for around fifteen minutes. However, if I don’t have much to write about, I will give it ten minutes. The weather’s a good subject to write about when you have little to write. 

If there’s a lot on my mind, I’ll keep going until I’ve emptied my thoughts. That’s very rarely more than thirty minutes, though.

Over the years, I’ve tried both analogue journaling—with pen and paper and digital journaling using an app called Day One. 

On balance, I’ve found that pen and paper journaling works best. 

I spend most of my working time in front of a screen. I type a lot. So, opening up a nice notebook and picking up a fountain pen is a lovely break from the constant screen time. It also feels a lot less rushed and more relaxing. 

One thing I noticed when I was writing my journal in Day One—a popular digital journal—was I never went back to my old entries. I read enough typed documents on screen all day. I have no desire to read through more, even if it’s my journal. 

I keep my old paper journals on my bookshelf and often skim through pages when waiting for a call to start. It’s incredibly nostalgic and leaves you realising you have accomplished a lot. 

I was recently asked if I am worried about people reading my journals. Hahaha, that’s the point. 

One of the inspirations for me to start writing a journal was how the journals of people like Samuel Pepys, Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton are still around. 

These journals were written hundreds of years ago and, in the case of Samuel Pepys, are a snapshot of how we lived in the 17th Century. 

Pepys was very open about what he did. Some good things and a lot of bad things. But does he care we are reading them today? Of course not. He’s been dead for 320 years. 

I have the same attitude. I’ve nothing to hide from my wife, and the journals are kept in my study—home office. If I lost my journal when travelling, so be it. There’s nothing scandalous in there—well, not yet anyway hahaha.

There are a few tips I would share with you if you are thinking about journaling. Start on paper. Buy yourself a nice notebook. You’ll find bound notebooks with a hard cover are best. Choose A5 or B5 size. You’ll find an A4 notebook a little daunting at first. 

Hardback notebooks will last a long time, and the hardcover will protect the pages better than a soft cover. 

I would also suggest investing in a fountain pen. You can pick up a refillable one for less than $20 these days. Lamy Safaris are excellent pens, and so are the Pilot Metropolitans and Platinum Preppys. 

If you invest in a fountain pen, ensure the paper you buy is fountain pen-friendly. Rhodia Web-books and Clairefontaine notebooks are good choices, as are many Japanese notebooks such as Midori’s MD notebooks. 

When you start journaling, think of it as if you were meeting a stranger for the first time. You will naturally be a little reserved at first. You might only write about the weather and perhaps what you did yesterday. 

As long as you remain consistent with it, you will soon open up. You’ll start writing a few thoughts and feelings after a few weeks. Let it roll and don’t hold back. 

I would also recommend writing in the morning. You will likely be much more consistent that way. Evening times can be difficult because you will sometimes be tired. You may even have had a few too many G’nTs, and you won’t write. 

Tie writing your journal to your morning routines. You don’t have to write for long. Give yourself ten minutes. 

And if you want to be more focused, after writing the date at the top, write out your two must-do tasks for the day. That way, you have a method to hold yourself accountable. If, for whatever reason, you didn’t do your must-do tasks, dedicate a sentence or two to writing about why you didn’t do them. 

This helps you because over time you may see a pattern developing. You might discover that afternoons are terrible for doing your focused work because your boss always wants to have meetings then. You can then use that information to change your structure. 

If you draw a margin on the page, you can use the margin to track other data such as a food log, exercise and even your energy levels. I track my weight there. Each Wednesday, I weigh myself and write my weight in the margin (in a different coloured ink). 

And there you go, Tom. Yes, journaling has helped me to be more productive. It slows me down and gets me to think better, leading to better focus on the day ahead. It also gives me a place to consider new ideas and play around with possible solutions. 

I hope this episode has inspired some of you to start journaling. It’s a fantastic way to bring perspective on chaotic days and weeks. It also slows you down—always a good thing in a fast-paced world, and gives you a place to express your thoughts. 

And who knows, you may be the next Samuel Pepys or Leonardo Da Vinci in three-hundred years or so. 

Thank you, Tom, for your question, and thank you to you, too, for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you a very, very productive week. 

Do you feel you are rushing from one task to another while not getting anything important done? Well, this week, I’m going to share with you a few ways to change that. 

You can subscribe to this podcast on:

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Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

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Take The NEW COD Course

The Working With… Weekly Newsletter

Carl Pullein Learning Centre

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Script | 353

Hello, and welcome to episode 354 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

What’s the rush? This is one of those powerful questions you can ask yourself when processing the things you have collected in your inboxes. 

It’s easy today to feel that everything you are asked to do must be done immediately. While there is a category of tasks that require quick action, most of what comes across your desk (or pops up on your screen) does not fall into that category. 

The trick, of course, is knowing which is which. This is where developing confidence in your judgement and abilities helps. But that can only come from establishing some “rules”. In a way, automating your decision-making.

I recently heard an interview with President J F Kennedy, in which he said as president, the kind of decisions you make are always high-level. Anything smaller will be dealt with at a lower level and rarely reach your desk. 

That’s an example of government in action. The president or Prime Minister cannot decide everything. Lower-level, less urgent things can and should be handled at a department level. 

That’s the same for you. Most of your decisions should be automated. What kind of emails are actionable, and what can be archived or deleted, for example. 

So, without further ado, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Edward. Edward asks, Hi Carl, I recently read your newsletter in which you wrote about slowing down. Could you explain a little more how to slow down and still be productive?

Hi Richard, thank you for your question.

One of the disadvantages of technology and how it has advanced over the last twenty years is the speed at which tasks can now be done. 

While technology has speeded up incredibly, our human brains have not. That causes us many issues. 

The biggest issue is because everyone knows how quickly we can reply to an email, they expect almost instant replies which ignores the fact we might being doing something else. 

For example, when I am driving or in a meeting or on a call, I cannot reply to an “urgent” email or message. I am doing something else. 

In the days before email, there was a natural delay. I remember when I was working in a law firm, email was very new and lawyers didn’t trust it. So, we continued writing letters. This meant, if we received a letter in the morning, we had until 4 pm to reply—that was when the mail went to the post office.

If we missed the post, that was okay, we could blame the post office. And that was accepted. 

Other lawyers knew this as did our clients and the clients of the other lawyers. 

This also meant we had time to think about our response, talk to a colleague if necessary or escalate to our boss if the issue was complex. 

Today, we often don’t feel we have that time. The truth is you do. 

One thing I’ve learned is when someone sends you something they are secretly hoping you do not respond quickly. They’re snowed under with work too. If you reply quickly, you’ve just given them more work to do today. You’re not going to be their favourite person. 

One of the easiest ways to reduce some of this anxiety is to put in place some rules. 

Let me give you an example. I receive around 100 to 150 emails a day. Most of the mail I receive comes through the night. I therefore process my inbox each morning before I start my work. The goal of processing my inbox is to clear it as fast as possible. 

There’s no time for applying the legendary two-minute rule (where anything that can be done in two minutes or less should be done). All I need is ten emails where I could apply the two-minute rule and I’ve lost twenty minutes. 

No thank you. I want a cleared inbox as quickly as possible. I’ve applied this rule for over ten years now and can clear 150 emails in less than twenty minutes. My record is 380 (ish) emails cleared in 36 minutes. 

Then around 4 pm, I will go to my email’s Action This Day folder. Begin with the oldest email and work my way through that for an hour. I aim to respond to any actionable email within 24 hours. And I would say I have a 95% success rate with that “rule”. 

It’s a process I repeat every day, and it’s ensured I never have an overwhelming backlog in email at any time. 

Now, I do have some rules. For example, anything involving money, whether that is issuing a refund, or sorting out a discount code, I will deal with as soon as I see the issue—people are sensitive when it comes to money. 

Also, questions from my Membership Community have priority as well as people who may have forgotten their password or are experiencing other difficulties getting into their learning centre dashboard. 

Fortunately, these instances are rare. Perhaps three or four a month. 

You can also apply rules for your core work—the work you are employed to do. Because your core work is work you have to do regularly, it’s easy to set up processes to do the work. 

Once you have a process set up, you can protect the time on your calendar to ensure you have the time to do the work. 

Because a process is something you repeat, you soon get fast at doing it. It’s a human form of automation. If you can fix it for the same time and day, it gets even better because you can start to accurately predict how long it will take you. And your colleagues learn your routines and will leave you alone. 

My wife knows that between 9:30 and 11:30 every morning, I am doing my creative work and to leave me alone. That took a lot of training hahaha.

There is a trick I learned from former Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Shamir was Prime Minister between 1986 and 1992, so before the proliferation of email and instant messages. 

Whenever a letter or memo came into his office, he would move it to the side and leave it there for a week or ten days. What he discovered was that 90% of what had come in had resolved itself. The ten percent that was left was where he needed to apply his attention. 

Rushing to respond or complete a piece of work often leads to unnecessary work. How many times have you responded to an email a few days after receiving it, only to be told the issue has been resolved? 

Now you may not be able to sit on something today for a week, but it is possible to pause for 24 hours. All you need is a little confidence in yourself. 

Slowing down is a great way to reduce the amount of work you have. 

I remember when I used to pounce on an email from a student asking for help logging into their account, only to find a subsequent email come in telling me they had resolved their issue. 

Now I wait an hour before responding. That way if a student does resolve their issue I am not wasting precious time resetting passwords that don’t need to be done. 

I’m reminded of this question: What the rush? With 2025 goals. 

It doesn’t matter what you have done on the 31st January. A 2025 goal is about what you have accomplished on the 31st December. The start will always be messy and inconsistent. 

It’s likely you original ideas don’t work, but with a little patience and a few adjustments you will find the right strategy. The result you want will come on 31st December, not 31 January. You have plenty of time. 

This idea of slowing down is at the heart of the Time Sector System. In the course, I recommend you default all new inputs to your Next Week folder. Something would have to be genuinely urgent to go into the This Week folder. 

By applying the default to your Next Week folder, when you do the weekly planning it’s fantastic to discover that thirty to forty percent of what’s in there no longer needs to be done. 

My wife is a get it done now person. Everything is urgent, even when it’s not. Out accountant in Korea is the opposite. Our accountant will ask us for the bank and credit card statements around six weeks before she needs them. When my wife receives that message, everything stops, and she rushes around trying to collect everything together in one afternoon.

It leaves her exhausted, and inevitably, something’s missed, and she then has to repeat the stress the following week. 

You want to be like our accountant. Work from your calendar, and ensure that you give yourself sufficient time to collect information. You don’t need to rush around panicking then. 

Slow down, protect sufficient time for the bigger tasks and default all new tasks to next week. You will find you have less to do, and what you do have to do can be done slowly, more meticulously and with fewer mistakes. 

Thank you, Edward, for your question. And thank you to you, too, for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.