This week it’s all about your goals and staying focused so you actually get round to completing them

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Carl Pullein Learning Centre

Productivity Masterclass | Create Your Own Custom Workflow

Carl’s YouTube Channel

Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Script

Episode 130

Hello and welcome to episode 130 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

I hope you are faring well during these difficult and unprecedented times. Disruptions to our lives like this do not come around very often, fortunately, yet with anything bad, I always like to see the silver lining and in this instance the opportunity to step back a little, review what we want to accomplish and how we want to accomplish it is an opportunity not to be missing. 

I’ve written and spoken in the past about the need to stress test any kind of system you build for yourself, and now is a great chance to test your system. How does it cope when you are thrown out of your normal, day to day routines? How does it manage when you are surrounded by interruptions and demands from family members? Does it still work? 

These questions can really help you to find that balance and find the best way for your system to be set up.

Now this week, I have a goals related question. We haven’t answered one of these for a while. This week it’s about staying focused on a goal and how to avoid being distracted and or lose interest in it once you have started taking the necessary action to make it happen. 

Now before that, I would like to remind you that if you have not done so already I have a FREE online course that will teach you the concepts of COD - That’s collect, Organise and Do. 

Collecting your tasks, commitments, ideas and events into a place you trust, spending a little time each day organising what you collected and the rest of the time doing the work you have identified needs to be done. It’s simple, it’s powerful and it works. 

Details of the course are in the show notes.

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

This week’s question comes from Toby. Toby asks: Hi Carl, I had a number of goals and projects that I was so excited to start this year and yet after a few weeks I lost interest and stopped working on them. I think I have a problem with motivation as this has always happened to me. Is there anything I can do to stay focused on them?

Hi Toby, thank you for your question and I can reassure you you are not alone. Struggling to stay focused on your goals and projects is hard. To achieve goals you are going to have to leave your comfort zone and that requires some big changes to your way of life. 

Completing projects can also be hard if you don't have a boss or colleagues keeping you accountable. It’s much easier to slip back into our normal way of doing things and find excuses about why we cannot achieve a goal or complete a project when we do not have someone keeping us accountable. 

And that’s something you need to be very alert to. The excuses your brain will come up with that prevents you from making the necessary changes you need to make to achieve your goal or complete a project. 

And boy our brains are fantastic at coming up with excuses about why you are so different from everyone else. Why you cannot write a blog post, why you can’t apply for that promotion or why you cannot run a 10km road race. 

What I’ve found is whenever a person says “I can’t” the vast majority of the time it’s got nothing to do with a lack of ability or qualifications or money. It’s got everything to do with a reluctance to make the necessary changes one needs to make to achieve that goal or to complete that project. 

The “ah but they are different” excuse. The thing is we are all different. But that does not mean you cannot achieve your goals or complete your projects. 

I recently heard a podcast talking about how Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson became the highest-paid Hollywood actor. It certainly wasn't luck. It’s because The Rock does the work nobody else is willing to do. 

Despite all the success he has had in recent years, the amount of money he has earned, he still wakes up at 4 am and goes for a run or spends 45 minutes or so on the running machine. The Rock understands this. He knows the secret to his success is in the gym, not on the sofa or lying in bed. It must be so easy for him to sit back and say I’ve made it. I don’t have to go to the gym today” Yet he still goes. Why? Because he knows why he is successful. He knows what it takes to be successful and he’s made the decision to make those sacrifices. 

You know, if you want to the physique of Dwayne Johnson you have to do the work Dwayne Johnson does. 

And if you are not prepared to do that that’s okay. Accept that as your reason for not having the physique of Dwayne Johnson. But don't delude yourself by saying The Rock is a special case, or he was lucky. No, he wasn't. He puts the work in day after day after day. There’s nothing lucky about that. 

That is commitment. Not luck. 

And this is the same for your projects and goals. It takes commitment and consistency. I suppose a good question to ask before you decide to start any project or goal is:

What am I prepared to sacrifice in order to complete this?

That’s because to commit to completing a project or goal will require you to make time for doing it. That means you are going to have to sacrifice something. What will you sacrifice?

It could be you enjoy sitting down at the end of a long day to watch TV. Or you love going out for a few drinks with your friends on a weekend, or your favourite place is your nice warm bed. 

If you really want to achieve your goal, complete your project what are you going to sacrifice? 

You see, if you’re not prepared to sacrifice anything to achieve your goal or complete your project your motivation is not strong enough to carry you through. 

A classic one is as the summer approaches many people feel the urge to lose some weight. So they embark on a crash diet. They go from eating three meals a day plus snacks to eating only one or two and no snacks. After a few hours on their new diet, they feel hungry. Then very hungry, then unbelievably hungry and after a few hours or a day or two they give up depending on the strength of their willpower. 

The sacrifice—the discomfort of feeling hungry—is more powerful than the urge to look good on their summer holiday. 

I often hear people talk of the desire to write a book or to start an online business as a side project. And these are great ways to develop skills and push your potential. Yet, once again there is a sacrifice to be made. There’s the risk of failure and the perceived embarrassment that will come from that—seriously if you fail that’s far better than never actually trying. There’s the time sacrifice—you are going to have to commit time to do these activities and that means you are going to have to stop doing something you already do. 

All of these sacrifices will test your resolve and test your motivation. 

So how do you develop motivation that is strong enough to overcome the discomfort of moving away from your comfort zone? 

Now that’s a very difficult one to answer because it depends on where you are in life. By that I mean if you are in your early twenties, you feel you have plenty of time to write the book, start your own business or start an exercise programme. 

I was a smoker when I was in my twenties—I didn’t care about lung cancer or other smoking-related diseases—they didn’t happen to people in their twenties. But as I got older that little voice in my head was telling me to give up—my long-term health would suffer and I would die young. And sure enough, the point came where my motivation to stay alive and live a healthy long-life became stronger than the nicotine hit I got from a cigarette. I quit. 

If you are in your early thirties you are thinking about settling down, developing your career and building a family life for yourself, By the time you get to your mid to late forties, you motivation to preserve your health will be becoming stronger. 

So a lot of our motivation comes from where we are in life. If you’ve just experienced the birth of your first child, your motivation to protect and preserve the financial well-being of your new family will be incredibly motivating. (Probably less so once that child becomes an adolescent teenager) As you approach retirement your motivation to build a sustainable retirement fund for yourself will be strong. 

So, if you are looking for motivation you need to be asking questions about why a goal or a project is important. 

And the final step to all of this you need to figure out what you need to do consistently every day to make whatever it is you want to accomplish happen. 

The truth is, motivation will not last. The discomfort of your sacrifice will always trump your motivation later in the day. What you need to be doing is developing habits and routines that take you towards completing your project or your goal.

Writing that book? Write something every day. Set a minimum target say 500 words per day. Want to lose weight? Change your eating habits. Find the foods that you currently eat that directly contribute to your weight gain and replace them with healthier alternatives. Want to get that promotion at work? Find out what you have to do in order to get it. What training courses can you take, what skills need developing and make doing the work a habit or a routine? Something you just do.

Look for the action steps that will directly result in you completing your project or achieving your goal. 

The Rock wakes up at 4 am because to him going to the gym and working out directly contributes to his success. Warren Buffett reads for 5 hours a day because he knows that the knowledge he picks up reading those financial reports directly contribute to his bottom line. 

What can you do that will directly contribute to you achieving success with your projects and goals? 

There you go, Toby. I hope that has helped and given you some concrete steps you can take to achieve your projects and goals. Thank you for your question.

And thank you to all of you for listening. Don’t forget, if you have a question, then you can email me—[email protected] or you can DM me on Facebook or Twitter.

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

This week it’s all about calming down an out of control productivity system. 

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Carl Pullein Learning Centre

Productivity Masterclass | Create Your Own Custom Workflow

Carl’s YouTube Channel

Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Script

Episode 129

Hello and welcome to episode 129 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

I do hope you are all doing well and staying safe. It is in times of difficulty when the best of us comes out. Now is the time to stand up and be a leader and set an example for everyone around us. 

Now this week, I’ve received a few emails and I’ve had a number of people ask this question on this subject—or a similar question— and that is one where the productivity system itself has become overwhelming and is now the problem and not the work being thrown at us. 

Now, before I do go into this week’s question, I should point out that if you also find your productivity system has become bloated and overwhelming now would be a very good time to take or retake, my FREE COD productivity course. COD (Collect, Organise and Do) was created with simplicity at its heart. It was born out of my own experiences creating a monster of a productivity system that In itself became the problem that demanded more and more of my time every day. 

The COD course will take you through the basic set up of a simple system, explain what you need (and by omission what you do not need) and show you, in outline, how to manage your work so you spend more time doing and less time organising and processing. 

So if you haven’t done so already, get yourself signed up. It’s completely free and don’t worry, it is not a sales pitch designed to get you to sign up for ever more expensive courses. It is a course designed to help, not sell. And most important of all, it will show you the essential components of building a productivity system that works for you.

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

This week’s question comes from Helen, Helen asks: Hi Carl, I’ve been following your work for some time and wonder if you can help sort out the mess I am in. I am using Evernote and Notion for my notes, I also have to use Microsoft OneNote for my work and I also use Todoist for my personal tasks and Microsoft’s new To-do for my work tasks. It all just feels so overwhelming. Is there anything I can do that will help me to feel more in control? 

Firstly, thank you, Helen, for sending in this question. 

Now, where do we start? The best place to start is recognising there is a problem and in this case Helen, you have done that. You have recognised you have a problem. 

A good place to start is to calculate how much time you are spending organising and processing each day. Under normal circumstances, you really should only be spending twenty to thirty minutes, maximum, processing and organising your work. The rest of the time you should be doing the work. 

A lot of overwhelm is self-inflicted. We spend more time adding than taking away. What we should be doing is looking at subtracting instead of adding. 

Asking questions such as ‘do I really need this app?’ And ‘Is this adding to or reducing the amount of work I do each day?’ Are helpful in determining whether or not your system is the cause of the problem. 

Also, look at the tasks themselves—do those tasks really need doing or can you combine them with other tasks—picking up your prescription at the same time as doing your weekly shopping. Replying to your actionable email while waiting to pick up your kids from school, for example.

Problems are also caused by us wanting to see a lot more than we need to see. And there is a difference between what we would like to see and what we need to see. 

What you need to see is a simple list of tasks you have prioritised to do today. Nothing else. What we like to see often can be a list of tasks labeled to be done at the office and at the computer. What we have planned for the week, progress of a specific project and a whole bunch of other stuff. The problem there, of course, is seeing all that stuff doesn’t move anything forward and just causes anxiety, overwhelm, distraction and a feeling of being busy. Not exactly a good mental state to be in. 

The time to be looking at future work is when you do your weekly planning session and to a less extent when you do your daily planning. 95% of the time on a day to day basis, you should only be seeing what you have prioritised to do today. That’s all that matters right now. 

Tomorrow’s tasks are irrelevant at 9 am today. Tomorrow’s tasks only become relevant tomorrow. Stop looking. Focus on today’s tasks today and tomorrow’s tasks tomorrow. 

You see, you are dressing up procrastination and calling it “planning”. Looking at next week’s tasks on a Tuesday afternoon when you still have Tuesday tasks to do is not planning. It’s procrastinating. There is a time for planning when a project or an idea needs developing and the associated tasks can be pulled out and put into your to-do list. But if you are constantly looking at what's coming up tomorrow, later in the week or next month and you still have tasks today’s tasks to do, you are procrastinating. Stop doing that. Do the tasks you have assigned yourself to do today and only go looking for more when you have completed those tasks. 

Now many people have become so conditioned to checking and rechecking that there is a feeling of comfort in this action. A kind of delusion has set in—being convinced that all this checking and reviewing is somehow making them more productive. It’s not. You need to snap out of that thinking. Planning, reviewing and checking have their place, but that should never be at the expense of doing the work. 

It’s similar to the same situation I find people who want to start a blog or YouTube channel. An awful lot of time is spent thinking, planning and thinking again and doing more research and more planning. You see all that planning, research and thinking is not doing. Nothing is being written or recorded. So nothing is happening. 

Again, planning, researching, and thinking have their place and they are important. But none of that should ever get in the way of actually doing. For me, if I find myself planning and thinking beyond a few hours I see that as a trigger to analyse why I am not doing. I’ve learned from experience that having an idea, spending a little time thinking and planning it out and then doing it often leads to something special. My blog, this podcast and my YouTube channel all had a few hours of research and planning, but they only ever got off the ground and started when I sat down and started writing or recording. It was those first few attempts that gave me far more momentum and information than whatever I read, watched or planned. 

So be very careful not to use ‘I just need to do a bit more research’ as an excuse not to start doing the work that matters. You’re going to learn a lot more from doing than you ever will from researching.

Now for the one that creeps upon us and we are not aware it is happening. Too many apps. 

This one has become a much bigger problem for many people over the last two or three years because we are so lucky to be living in an age where I feel human ingenuity and creativity are at a peak. 

There are so many amazing apps to choose from out there. From Notion to Bear Notes, from Things 3 to Microsoft’s ToDo. All of these apps have sprung up in the last two or three years and promise so much. It is so tempting to add one of these tools to our system. 

And of course, we convince ourselves that we absolutely must have this new app because it is going to plug a gap we think we have in our system. Notion to me is the biggest culprit here because it promises to be all things to all people. It’s a task manager, a personal wiki, a note-taking app, a research tool and a place to play around with building creative lists. 

The problem here is because Notion is all things it is not one thing. So we add it to our toolbox and do not eliminate any of our existing tools. So now, not only do you have a to-do list and a notes app to keep up with and maintain, you now have Notion to keep up with and maintain too. You’ve just added more processing and organising time and done nothing that optimises the time you spend doing. 

When you have tools that duplicate each other you put a lot of drag on your overall system. When you collect something where does it go? Which to-do list? Which notes app? Which calendar app? That’s a lot of decisions to make. And if you are in a rush and you collect something, how do you remember where you collected it? 

This is why I preach you need one to-do list, one notes app and one calendar app. You do not need multiple apps that do the same thing. 

If your company requires you to use Outlook and Outlook calendar, then make Outlook calendar your calendar app. Likewise, if your company collaborates using OneNote, use OneNote as you notes app. Don’t use OneNote for Work and Evernote for personal. You are just overloading your cognitive load and you just do not need all that complexity. 

If you are serious about becoming better organised and more productive, then drop your excess apps. Pick one. One to-do list, one notes app and one calendar app. That’s all you need. You may have a lot of work to do, but you are not a multinational conglomerate responsible for over 100,000 employees and millions of customers. You are an individual with a number of tasks to perform each day and a limited number of hours in which to do those tasks. You do not need all these distractions and complexity. 

Focus on the work you have decided needs doing today, keep the apps you use to a minimum and reduce the amount of distractions and interruptions you get as best you can. Doing that will reduce your overwhelm and busy-ness and improve the quality of your work faster than another app will do. It leaves you feeling much more relaxed fulfilled and ultimately a lot happier.

I hope that has helped, Helen. Keep things simple and you will be fine. 

Thank you for the question and thank you to all of you for listening. Don’t forget to have a look at my FREE COD course—details of which are in the show notes— and please stay safe. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week. 

This week, it’s all about what you can do to fine-tune your productivity systems so when we do come out of this pandemic you hit the track running. 

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

Carl Pullein Learning Centre

Productivity Masterclass | Create Your Own Custom Workflow

Carl’s YouTube Channel

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Script

Episode 128

Hello and welcome to episode 128 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week I have a question about what you can do with that little bit of extra time each week because you no longer have to spend hours commuting or stuck in traffic jams. 

Speaking of having a little extra time, whether you have taken the free COD course or not, now would be a very good time to do the course again (or do it for the first time) 

It’s completely free and it will give you everything you need to begin building your own productivity system. 

Remember, you are a unique person with your own way of thinking and doing things. This is why developing your own system around three core areas—collecting, organising and doing—is the best place to start. 

Details on how to join the course are in the show notes and I hope you get as much value from it as the thousands of other people who have taken the course already have. 

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 Mike. Mike asks, hi Carl, like most people I am stuck at home and find I have a lot of extra time on my hands. I don't want to waste this chance. Are there any things I can do that will help to make me more productive?

Thank you, Mike, for your question. It’s something I have been doing. Looking at the way I do my work, seeing if I can find more effective and efficient ways of doing it and of course clearing up old folders, wardrobes and drawers around my home. 

So what can you do to make your system more efficient and effective? 

One area you may want to start with is to clean up your notes app. This is an app that can quickly fill up with a lot of old notes and stuff we collected and no longer need and just get forgotten about. 

Now if you are anything like me, you may have a few thousand notes, so the question is where do you begin? For me, I start with the oldest notes. These are the ones most likely to be deleted.

Most notes apps will allow you to flip the way they are organised. You want to change your order from last in to first in—or oldest first. This just makes it a little easier as you will be organising from the top down—the natural way—rather than the bottom up—the unnatural way. 

When I last did this, I had around 6,000 notes in my notes app. Clearing up 6,000 notes is quite daunting, so I decided to do 3 months at a time. I had three years of notes, that’s 36 months and so I divided that by 3 and that gave me the number of days I needed to clear up my notes app. - 12 days. 

Doing it that way reduced any pressure and it turned into a fun experience. For the record, I got those 6,000 notes down to around 4,000 notes in just 12 days. Although I am sure it wasn't real, my notes app did feel a lot faster after that cleanup. 

Another area you can cleanup is your to-do list. I find a lot of people have projects in there that are dormant. Projects that if you were being completely honest with yourself were not projects but wishes. If you know deep down that you will never get round to doing the project (or task) then clear it out. 

For the more sensitive of you, you could create a master list of these projects and tasks in your notes app. At least then you won’t feel too upset having deleted a lot of old stuff that has been hanging around for a while.

Although, I find deleting them completely means if they are important, they will come back up in the future and then I just re-add them as a new project. The truth is most of these deleted projects and tasks never come back—they were just a lot of wishful tasks and projects. 

It’s a very hard thing to do, but it can be very refreshing and similarly to when you clean up your notes app, you get re-energised with your to-do list and having less in there speeds up your whole decision-making process. 

A lot of problems with our to-do lists comes from not being able to let go of projects and tasks that have been hanging around for a while and we have somehow convinced ourselves they are important. If you have not touched them for two or three months (or more) they’re not important and you should let them go. 

For example, if you haven’t started writing the book you intended to start writing in January, you are not going to do it anytime soon either. Let it go. 

By all means, keep your notes in your notes app, but if you are not actively writing your book, let it go. It’s taking up cognitive space in your mind every time you see the project and you really do not want to be wasting precious mental energy on something you clearly are not motivated to do (if you were motivated, you would be writing it!) Let it go.

In the past, I’ve had a number of projects like this just sitting around in my projects list and every time I do a review I am reminded I am not doing anything about it. It does not make me feel good about myself. I know if it was important enough I would always find time to do it. I also know if something is not really important enough, I just find excuses for not doing it. And I can often feel as if I am a genius when comes to excuses. Just let them go. 

Now for the elephant in the room, so to speak. The files on your computer. I know, this is likely to be the scary place. How are your files and documents filed? Are they organised? Do you know where everything is? If you’re like most people, probably not. While you have a little extra time, now would be a great time to get these cleaned up and organised. 

Now when it comes to organising your files there is not going to be a lot of help out there for you because we are all different. The way I organise my files is likely to be very different from the way someone else organises their files. I use the tagging function on my Mac to organise my files by the different areas I work in. My productivity business, my communications business and my personal life. I also use iCloud as my main cloud storage system (with a little help from Google Drive for collaborating) When I’ve tried helping other people to set this system up, we usually fail spectacularly. That’s because we all think differently and we would naturally search for something in a different way. 

I began my working life just as computers were beginning take over the office (the early nineties) and so we were still heavily reliant on the trusty old filing cabinet. So, my first exposure to filing documents was with an alpha-numeric system and a metal filing cabinet. So for me, organising my files by area and alphanumerically just makes sense. 

I’ve come across software engineers who have what appears to be incredibly complex coding systems for organising, but for them, they can find anything they want faster than I can with my system. 

But no matter how you organise your files and documents there will always be files and documents that need cleaning up, deleting and archiving. Now’s a great time to do that. You may never get this opportunity again for a very long time.

Another area you can take a look at is how you structure your day. For this use your calendar. Go back to before the pandemic came along and see where you were spending your time during the week. Look at the meetings you attended and decide if that was a good use of your time. I have found that many of the meetings I used to attend were not all that useful and were surprisingly easy to be excused from. 

Something I’ve been playing around with over the last week or two is developing my “perfect day”. What I’ve done is created a new calendar and called it “my perfect day” and added the things I would like to spend my days doing. It’s been a very interesting exercise as I discovered I want to begin my days writing. It could be a blog post, a podcast script or a book I am working on. Later in the week, I want to spend time doing my video and podcast recording. 

And, I would like to be able to exercise twice a day. Running in the morning and weights in the afternoon. That was something that came up while I was playing around with what my ‘perfect’ week would look like. 

I would begin the day at 7 AM and write for two hours. Then go out for a run for forty to fifty minutes. Come back, shower, have breakfast and then do some planning and communication work until lunch. After lunch, a little more writing and around 4 pm go to the gym for an hour. 

What I discovered was teaching my English classes didn’t feature very much at all. This has given me some food for thought about how I want my days to go in the future and I can now begin the process of building that ‘perfect’ week and turning it into reality. 

Not only is this a fun exercise, but it’s also eye-opening. You often find that what you are doing now—or before the pandemic—is not what you want to be doing. It may just be the stimulus to get you to make some significant changes that could lead you to find that dream work and turning every day into an amazing day.

Finally, one more area you can take a look at is your home working environment. This may be the first time you have worked from home and you have discovered that you do not have a good environment from which to work. Asking the question “What would I have to do to turn my working environment at home into the perfect workspace?” 

I did this exercise a couple of years ago and it led me to ditch my desktop computer, buying a more powerful laptop and an external monitor and it transformed the way I worked. It’s wonderful now to be able to move around and work from my sofa from time to time or just unplugging my laptop and heading out to the local coffee shop to work on some writing or video editing. 

Sometimes the little things can make a huge difference in the way you get your work done. 

So there you go, Mike. Quite a lot of things you can take a look at and clean up. Doing this, what I call, backend work can give you a huge boost in your productivity because your apps will feel faster, you will have renewed enthusiasm for your system and your files will all be current and meaningful to you.

I hope that’s been helpful. Thank you, Mike, for your question and thank you to all of you for listening. If you feel this episode or any of my other episodes could help someone you know, then please share this podcast with them. And, don’t forget to retake or take my FREE COD course. It might just help you to finally have a system in place that will help you to Bec less stress, anxious and overwhelmed. 

Stay safe and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.