Your Time, Your Way

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about managing an overwhelming to-do list.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes

Script

Hello and welcome to episode 66 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week it’s all about regaining control of your day and the tasks you have to complete so you get your important work done and can actually have some time to yourself each day.

Before I get into this week’s question though, I’d just like to remind you to enrol in my FREE beginners guide to creating your own COD system. This course will give you the framework to develop a simple system that is easy to maintain and will boost your productivity by keeping you focused on the things that are important and will help you to eliminate the unimportant things—the things that do not take you closer to your North Star—ie, your purpose. So get yourself enrolled. It’s free and will only take you around 40 minutes to complete. 

Okay, onto this week’s question and that means handing you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Michael. Michael asks: Hi Carl, I have so many tasks every day on my to-do list that I do not know where to start. Is there anything I can do that will help me to make better decisions?

Thank you, Michael, for your question. Now I know this problem is a very common problem indeed. Often we rush to collect everything that comes across our mind whether that is an event, a task or an idea and we dump them all into our to-do list’s inbox. To be honest, that’s actually a very good place to start. Collecting everything is a good thing—after all, it is the first step of COD (collect, organise and do). Now if we are not organising those items at least every day or two, things are going to mount up, and when we look at an overflowing inbox our minds begin to dread looking there and then the whole system begins to fall apart. 

So it is important you organise the stuff you collect every day. But, when you do organise you need to be thinking strategically. If you just randomly date things just to get them out of your inbox and so you know they will pop up in your today list one day in the future you are going to have a few problems. The first problem of course is you will have a list of to-dos in your today view that don’t really need doing that day. When that happens we tend to stop prioritising our today list. The purpose of your today list is that anything on there really does need your attention that day. It could be a simple reminder task to review a project that after seeing it, you decide to put off for another week. That’s okay, the important thing is when a task appears on your today list it has to appear there because you want to see it on that specific day. If you do not need to see it that day, then it should not be on your today list. 

And that brings me to another problem I often see. That is one of trust. If you do not trust you will see a task when you need to see a task you will date everything—randomly— and that causes a long list of tasks on a today list you do not need to see. It’s a trust issue. 

Now not trusting your system can be because you have just started with a productivity system and it will take time to trust it. It could be caused by constantly switching to-do list managers so you are not sure if everything migrated across properly from your previous to-do list manager or it could be because you are not doing a full weekly review—which is the most common reason. 

Now there are two types of weekly reviews. There’s a normal, take it slowly with a nice cup of tea and some great music weekly review and then there’s the secret weekly review that people like me who coach people to become better organised and more productive don’t like to tell you about. But, because I am feeling VERY generous today, and will tell you… But only this once so listen carefully…

The secret weekly review is called the “skimmed weekly review”. The skimmed weekly review only takes around fifteen to twenty minutes, as opposed to the full forty-five to sixty minutes a normal weekly review takes, and what you do is go through all your projects and areas of focus quickly just checking that the tasks you have there are still relevant and have the correct dates on them. With a full weekly review, you go through each project and area of focus carefully and compare your tasks with your calendar to make sure your dated to-dos fall on the right days and at the right times. 

I don’t recommend you do the skimmed weekly review often, but sometimes if you are on a business trip or you are particularly busy then it can be useful just to keep yourself up to date and moving forward. 

If you do worry about not seeing your tasks when you need to see them then review how you do your weekly review. Make sure you have your calendar open when you do it and compare your daily task lists for each day against your calendar. If one day next week you have back to back meetings all day, then you need to reduce the number of tasks on your list for that day. If you have a very quiet day where you can focus on your work for a long period of time, then you can allocate a few more to-dos for that day. 

So, hopefully, if you have a good weekly review behind you, you should find that your daily tasks list for each day reflects how busy you are for each day next week. 

Next step to reducing your daily to-do list and to help make better decisions on what you should be working on is to use the 2+8 Prioritisation system. I’ve covered this many time before so I won’t go into details here. I will put a link in the show notes to a video I did on it a few months ago. 

Now basically the 2+8 Prioritisation system asks you to choose two tasks that you really must get done that day. And that barring an emergency you WILL make sure you get them done. 

Then you have 8 other tasks you have chosen the night before that would have the biggest positive impact on your work or goals if you complete them the next day. That’s it. 

This means when you start the day you already know what exactly you want to accomplish that day. And you will put all your focus and attention on those ten tasks and in particular, the two objective tasks that you have chosen MUST get done that day. 

Now the reason why you do this the night before instead of on the morning of the day itself is so when you start the day you already know exactly what it is you should be doing. There’s no chance you will waste any time thinking about what to do, or get yourself lost in a sea of tasks you might like to get done. You have ten tasks and you will do everything you can to get them completed by the end of the day. 

Of course there will be interruptions and more tasks coming in throughout the day, that’s normal day to day life. As they come in you need to assess their urgency and decide if you need to do them that day or not. But your focus for the day is the 2+8 tasks you have already chosen to complete that day. The whole point is if you get those ten tasks complete you will feel you have had a productive day. 

I should point out here that your 2+8 tasks do not include any routine housekeeping tasks you have to do every day. For example, I do not include my daily admin tasks in my 2+8 Prioritisation system. My daily routines take around 30 minutes each day and I have those 30 minutes scheduled on my calendar at 9:30 pm every day to complete. I do not need to see those tasks until 9:30 pm and so they are out of view until that time. How you do that will depend on the to-do list manager you are using, but it is worth figuring out because when your list only shows two tasks when you look at it in the morning you will feel a lot less overwhelmed and stressed. 

Another bit of advice I can give you Michael is to get into the habit of asking yourself a simple question when you sit down to organise your day. That question is one I have already alluded to and that is:

What tasks can I complete tomorrow that will have the biggest positive impact on my projects and goals?

It’s a powerful question and will lead you to make the right decisions about what you should be working on. Make sure you include your goals in there somewhere. If you are not including your goals you will not make any progress on your goals. So make sure somewhere in those ten tasks you have at least one goal task. 

Having your goals on your daily priorities list is the best way to make sure you are always heading towards your North Star. The place you want to be in ten or twenty-five years time. Of course, this will change as you travel towards it, it always does. Some things we want to achieve today become less important as time goes by, and that’s perfectly okay. The important thing is you are always travelling towards the destination you want to go, not the destinations others would like to drag you. 

The biggest problem today is not the work we have to do, with all the technology and automation available to us that can easily be dealt with. It’s the expectations we place on ourselves. Our perceived capacity for work is bigger than the time we have available each day. So we either rush to get work done and end up with a lower standard of work than we are capable of, or we spend far too much time doing work and not enough time getting the valuable rest we need to be able to perform at our best every day. This causes a super-stressed state which does not do us any good physically or mentally. You need to get more realistic about what you can do in a day. 

One way to do this is to monitor how long it takes you to do a piece of work you regularly have to do. For example, I know to write my weekly blog post takes around 90 minutes and to edit it takes roughly 30 to 40 minutes. To record my weekly YouTube videos takes about 2 hours and the editing takes about a further 2 hours. This means I can schedule blocks of time to do this work each week. Once these blocks are on my calendar, I can relax knowing I have the time available to do the work. And remember, the golden rule of calendars… What goes on your calendar gets done. 

Well, I hope that answers your question for you, Michael. Don’t forget if you have a question you would like me to answer on this show, then get in touch either by email ([email protected]) or via Twitter or Facebook. 

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

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about managing an overwhelming to-do list.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes

Script

Hello and welcome to episode 66 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week it’s all about regaining control of your day and the tasks you have to complete so you get your important work done and can actually have some time to yourself each day.

Before I get into this week’s question though, I’d just like to remind you to enrol in my FREE beginners guide to creating your own COD system. This course will give you the framework to develop a simple system that is easy to maintain and will boost your productivity by keeping you focused on the things that are important and will help you to eliminate the unimportant things—the things that do not take you closer to your North Star—ie, your purpose. So get yourself enrolled. It’s free and will only take you around 40 minutes to complete. 

Okay, onto this week’s question and that means handing you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Michael. Michael asks: Hi Carl, I have so many tasks every day on my to-do list that I do not know where to start. Is there anything I can do that will help me to make better decisions?

Thank you, Michael, for your question. Now I know this problem is a very common problem indeed. Often we rush to collect everything that comes across our mind whether that is an event, a task or an idea and we dump them all into our to-do list’s inbox. To be honest, that’s actually a very good place to start. Collecting everything is a good thing—after all, it is the first step of COD (collect, organise and do). Now if we are not organising those items at least every day or two, things are going to mount up, and when we look at an overflowing inbox our minds begin to dread looking there and then the whole system begins to fall apart. 

So it is important you organise the stuff you collect every day. But, when you do organise you need to be thinking strategically. If you just randomly date things just to get them out of your inbox and so you know they will pop up in your today list one day in the future you are going to have a few problems. The first problem of course is you will have a list of to-dos in your today view that don’t really need doing that day. When that happens we tend to stop prioritising our today list. The purpose of your today list is that anything on there really does need your attention that day. It could be a simple reminder task to review a project that after seeing it, you decide to put off for another week. That’s okay, the important thing is when a task appears on your today list it has to appear there because you want to see it on that specific day. If you do not need to see it that day, then it should not be on your today list. 

And that brings me to another problem I often see. That is one of trust. If you do not trust you will see a task when you need to see a task you will date everything—randomly— and that causes a long list of tasks on a today list you do not need to see. It’s a trust issue. 

Now not trusting your system can be because you have just started with a productivity system and it will take time to trust it. It could be caused by constantly switching to-do list managers so you are not sure if everything migrated across properly from your previous to-do list manager or it could be because you are not doing a full weekly review—which is the most common reason. 

Now there are two types of weekly reviews. There’s a normal, take it slowly with a nice cup of tea and some great music weekly review and th

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about finding focus and concentration.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes

Above and Beyond Group Therapy Podcast

Anjunabeats Worldwide Podcast

Anjunadeep Podcast

Script

Hello and welcome to episode 65 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week it’s all about getting your life under control when everything goes crazy and the workload mounts up. A situation that can happen to any of us at any time. 

Before I do get into this week’s question though I would like to thank you all for listening and to remind you that if you have a question you would like answering on this show, then all you have to do is to either email me [email protected] or DM me on Twitter or Facebook. 

And for those of you who feel their ‘system’ is not working, then be sure to check out my FREE online course, The Beginners Guide to Building You Own COD system. This course could change your life because the simplicity, and easy maintenance of the COD system, when implemented has the power to dramatically boost your productivity.

Okay on with the show and that means it’s time for me now to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Nonica. Nonica asks: Hello Carl, really I'm struggling with lack of focus and concentration. I have many pending writing projects and I have been missing deadlines I feel extremely distracted. I would be very grateful for your advice, suggestions and guidance. 

Hi Nonica, thank you very much for your question. 

Now I know at times it can be very hard to know what to focus on when you have so many things coming at you at once. This can be particularly so when you have an ever-increasing workload and family and personal commitments to attend to. When things become overwhelming in this way, our brain becomes our worst enemy because it starts screaming at you and reminding you all the time about the work you have to get done and does so at the most inconvenient of times. It will remind you-you have to finish off writing an article just as you are drifting off to sleep at the end of the day. It will remind you of the meeting preparation you have to do as you are trying to enjoy a romantic dinner with your partner and it will remind you-you have to call someone at 3AM in the morning—the worst time to call someone.

Now when you feel completely overwhelmed and you don’t know where to start you need to take some timeout and stop. I know, when you feel you a lot to do, the very thought of stopping doing what you need to do seems a stupid idea, but if all you are doing is running around in a state of indecision and inactivity then stopping that for an hour or so is not going to have any impact on your current productivity or ability to get work done because you aren’t actually getting any work done anyway.

Okay, the first thing you need to do is to calm your brain and the best way to do that is to get everything you have on your mind out of your mind and into an external place. That could be a piece of paper or a digital list. Where you write it doesn’t really matter. What matters is you get everything out of your head. Your mind is a terrible place to hold all your commitments and work because your mind doesn’t really know when you need reminding of things and so it reminds you of everything all at once and that’s why you end up feeling overwhelmed. 

Once you have everything written down you need to start organising and prioritising. This is why it is often better to get all this into a digital to-do list. A task list manager such as Todoist (which has a free version) would be a great

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about finding focus and concentration.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes

Above and Beyond Group Therapy Podcast

Anjunabeats Worldwide Podcast

Anjunadeep Podcast

Script

Hello and welcome to episode 65 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week it’s all about getting your life under control when everything goes crazy and the workload mounts up. A situation that can happen to any of us at any time. 

Before I do get into this week’s question though I would like to thank you all for listening and to remind you that if you have a question you would like answering on this show, then all you have to do is to either email me [email protected] or DM me on Twitter or Facebook. 

And for those of you who feel their ‘system’ is not working, then be sure to check out my FREE online course, The Beginners Guide to Building You Own COD system. This course could change your life because the simplicity, and easy maintenance of the COD system, when implemented has the power to dramatically boost your productivity.

Okay on with the show and that means it’s time for me now to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Nonica. Nonica asks: Hello Carl, really I'm struggling with lack of focus and concentration. I have many pending writing projects and I have been missing deadlines I feel extremely distracted. I would be very grateful for your advice, suggestions and guidance. 

Hi Nonica, thank you very much for your question. 

Now I know at times it can be very hard to know what to focus on when you have so many things coming at you at once. This can be particularly so when you have an ever-increasing workload and family and personal commitments to attend to. When things become overwhelming in this way, our brain becomes our worst enemy because it starts screaming at you and reminding you all the time about the work you have to get done and does so at the most inconvenient of times. It will remind you-you have to finish off writing an article just as you are drifting off to sleep at the end of the day. It will remind you of the meeting preparation you have to do as you are trying to enjoy a romantic dinner with your partner and it will remind you-you have to call someone at 3AM in the morning—the worst time to call someone.

Now when you feel completely overwhelmed and you don’t know where to start you need to take some timeout and stop. I know, when you feel you a lot to do, the very thought of stopping doing what you need to do seems a stupid idea, but if all you are doing is running around in a state of indecision and inactivity then stopping that for an hour or so is not going to have any impact on your current productivity or ability to get work done because you aren’t actually getting any work done anyway.

Okay, the first thing you need to do is to calm your brain and the best way to do that is to get everything you have on your mind out of your mind and into an external place. That could be a piece of paper or a digital list. Where you write it doesn’t really matter. What matters is you get everything out of your head. Your mind is a terrible place to hold all your commitments and work because your mind doesn’t really know when you need reminding of things and so it reminds you of everything all at once and that’s why you end up feeling overwhelmed. 

Once you have everything written down you need to start organising and prioritising. This is why it is often better to get all this into a digital to-do list. A task list manager such as Todoist (which has a free version) would be a great way to do this because you can drag and move around items in a list. What you do is list out all the things you wrote down into categories and priorities. So for example, if you have six writing projects you would group those together and then prioritise them by when they are due to be completed. If you have a list of errands that need completing you would group those errands together and again prioritise which ones are the most important ones. Keep doing this until you have everything on your list categorised and prioritised. 

If you give yourself two hours to do the brain dump and the organising you should be able to get most things into some kind of logical order in that time. 

Okay, so great you now have a long, organised, list of things to do, How does that help me get things done? I hear you ask.

Good question. Here’s the answer: open up your calendar. Now hopefully, you have all your events already on your calendar. This should include your professional and personal commitments. If you don’t, do it now. You need to see where you have blocks of time. For most people, you will have a mix of meetings (onsite and offsite) as well as your personal commitments such as spending time with your family and friends, dental and medical appointments etc. 

Now the reason you use your calendar is that your calendar is a list of the 24 hours you have each day. It is a visual representation of the time you have available each day and it never lies… Well unless you put stuff on there you never do. And you should not be doing that with your calendar. 

Before we go any further you need to implement a golden rule. That is: “what goes on your calendar gets done.” No excuses! The only reason an event on your calendar does not get done is either because the appointment was cancelled or for an absolute emergency. Your calendar, from now on, is your one productivity tool that will never ever lie. This has to be the one commitment you make to yourself that you stick to whatever happens. 

Okay, so you have your calendar open and your professional and personal commitments are on there. What do you do next? 

Right, now look at tomorrow. Where are the blank time slots? You may have a time slot between 8am and 10am where you have nothing on. Block that off right now. Choose one of the categories you have on your list of things to do and write that in that block. So in your case, Nonica, you could write in that block “Writing Time”. So now you have made a commitment to yourself to spend two hours writing tomorrow between 8AM and 10AM. And it is a commitment. Now it is on your calendar and remember, “what’s on your calendar gets done” so you are committed. 

Now, it’s a good idea to bring in the principles of the Golden 10 here—That is spending ten minutes at the end of the day to plan the next day—What you do here is look at your calendar and see you have a writing commitment between 8AM and 10AM tomorrow morning. Make a decision the night before in your ten-minute planning session on what you will write in that two hours. You do not want to be deciding that at 8AM tomorrow morning. You need to make that decision well before you sit down to write so you do not start wasting time procrastinating. 

Now let’s say you have a regularly recurring event that you know you must do or you feel obligated to do. This could be something like having to take care of elderly parents or grandparents. This again is a commitment and something you should get on your calendar. To me, family is far more important than work and so comes in at number 1 on my priorities list. As I fill out my calendar with time slots for the work I have to do, my family commitments would be put on there first. If a family member is in a hospital for example, then I would be scheduling visiting times every day. If the hospital visiting times are in the early evenings, then block that time off. Doing this means you get to see the available times you have for getting your work done. 

Now, if you do have an unusually high amount of work to do, you may want to schedule more time in the evenings for additional work time. This often happens to me when I am developing a course or editing a book. I would schedule additional work time between 9pm and 11pm for doing that work. This is only temporary and so I do not worry too much about my work-life balance in those times. The work has to be done, and once it has been done I can relax. 

Now over the next two to three weeks, you schedule your time slots to take care of all the work that is on your list. How you and what your schedule, of course, will be up to you and the deadlines you have coming up. You have to decide what gets done first. 

Okay, so that takes care of the list you created when you did your mind dump. But there is another issue here. Life does not stop just because you have emptied your head of all the things you have to do. Life has a bad habit of creating more work for us every day so you are going to be picking up more work after you have completed your list. In this case, depending on how much work you have to do right now, you may need to put a temporary stop to new work coming in. In these situations, you need to talk to your work generators (as I like to call them) and ask then to freeze new work for a couple weeks so you can catch up. In my experience, people are very reasonable and will accommodate your request. It’s only a temporary freeze and it will allow you to catch up and get everything in perspective. 

If your work generators are not willing to freeze new work, you are going to have to allow sufficient time on your calendar for the new work coming in. This means keeping an hour or so each day free for such situations. The good news here is if you do not need that time for new work you can allocate other work to that time. 

The final piece to this is to make sure you are not writing out your tasks so they feel overwhelming. If you write your task out as “write end of year report” and you know the end of year report is a 10,000 word report, you are not going to be motivated to do anything and you will feel overwhelmed. Instead, write “write 500 or 1,000 words of the end of year report” or you could write, as I do, “continue writing end of year report” That is a much more manageable chunk and you are much more likely to be motivated to get it done. By using the words “continue writing” I write as much as I can and I don’t get that mental panic of thinking I have to write the full 10,000 words. 

Other things you should be doing during your blocked out time is to switch off your distractions. That means your phone, your email and the people around you. Use headphones if you can and listen to great music. The Anjunabeats Worldwide and Above And Beyond’s Group Therapy podcasts are great to work to, and if you prefer something a little slower try the Anjunadeep podcast. I will put links to these fantastic podcasts in the show notes. 

And that’s really all you can do, Nonica. You need to first get everything on your mind off your mind and into an external place—paper or digital—then you need to categorise what those things are. Once you have that done use your calendar to block the time off you need to get them done. The only way the work will get done is if you do the work and to do the work you need to make time to do it. You calendar can be your best friend there. 

I hope that has helped and and thank you so much for your question, Nonica. 

Thank you to you also for listening. I do this for you guys and I want to help as many of you as I can to become better organised and more productive. So if you know anyone that could benefit from subscribing to this podcast please share it with them. 

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

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about managing multiple roles in your life.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes

 

Script

Hello and welcome to episode 64 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

Well, I hope your year has started well and you are making significant progress on your goals. This week, I have a great question about managing multiple roles in your life and I know many of you out there are not just doing a job, you are also a parent, a friend, a teacher and perhaps a church or community leader. These are roles that create specific tasks and projects that you need to be managing. 

Before we get into this week’s question, if you haven’t already enrolled in my FREE Beginners Guide To Creating Your Own COD system, then now is a great time to do so. The course packed full of ideas for you to create your own productivity system around the basic principle of Collecting, Organising and Doing (See C.O.D) the foundations of any great productivity system is simplicity and you can’t get any simpler than COD. 

So, if you do struggle with productivity, then this course will only take you around forty minutes to complete and once you complete it you will have the basics to create your own system and a system that will grow and work for you whatever your roles are now and into the future. So go on, get yourself enrolled now and begin a whole new productive life. 

Okay, onto this week’s question and that means 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 Jim. Jim asks: What are some strategies to manage a personal and professional life that is composed of many, multiple roles?

Thank you, Jim, for the wonderful question.

What Jim has done here is just a few simple words has described what most people face. That is a life with multiple roles. So the question becomes, how do I manage all those roles? 

Now, the first thing I am going to assume is that most of you listening to this podcast use some form of to-do list manager. Either that is a full Digital system such as Todoist, Trello or Omnifocus or a simple notebook and pen. When you have many roles it is important to have a place where you can manage all the tasks you need to do to maintain those roles. 

So the first thing I am going to suggest is you create an areas of focus area in your to-do list manager. This needs to be quite separate from your projects list. Now for most of you using a task management system, you are likely to have an area where you list out your various projects. These projects are deadline specific and you complete set of defined tasks that will lead you to a completed project by the deadline date. Once the project is complete you can archive the project. 

Areas of focus are quite different because they have no deadline date, or at least no fixed deadline date. An example of this would say if you run a blog. Each week there will be tasks you need to complete to write and publish a blog post, but the blog itself has no deadline date because you are writing and publishing every week. So you have an area of focus called “blog” and inside that will be your recurring writing tasks and maybe some maintenance tasks you need to perform from time to time. 

Now, the changes come when you have a specific project related to your blog. Let’s say for example you decide to redesign your blog. Now you have a project because the redesign of your blog will have a deadline—a date you want to complete the redesign by. When this happens you can create a project for the redesign in your active projects list for the redesign. 

So hopefully th

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about managing multiple roles in your life.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes

 

Script

Hello and welcome to episode 64 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

Well, I hope your year has started well and you are making significant progress on your goals. This week, I have a great question about managing multiple roles in your life and I know many of you out there are not just doing a job, you are also a parent, a friend, a teacher and perhaps a church or community leader. These are roles that create specific tasks and projects that you need to be managing. 

Before we get into this week’s question, if you haven’t already enrolled in my FREE Beginners Guide To Creating Your Own COD system, then now is a great time to do so. The course packed full of ideas for you to create your own productivity system around the basic principle of Collecting, Organising and Doing (See C.O.D) the foundations of any great productivity system is simplicity and you can’t get any simpler than COD. 

So, if you do struggle with productivity, then this course will only take you around forty minutes to complete and once you complete it you will have the basics to create your own system and a system that will grow and work for you whatever your roles are now and into the future. So go on, get yourself enrolled now and begin a whole new productive life. 

Okay, onto this week’s question and that means 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 Jim. Jim asks: What are some strategies to manage a personal and professional life that is composed of many, multiple roles?

Thank you, Jim, for the wonderful question.

What Jim has done here is just a few simple words has described what most people face. That is a life with multiple roles. So the question becomes, how do I manage all those roles? 

Now, the first thing I am going to assume is that most of you listening to this podcast use some form of to-do list manager. Either that is a full Digital system such as Todoist, Trello or Omnifocus or a simple notebook and pen. When you have many roles it is important to have a place where you can manage all the tasks you need to do to maintain those roles. 

So the first thing I am going to suggest is you create an areas of focus area in your to-do list manager. This needs to be quite separate from your projects list. Now for most of you using a task management system, you are likely to have an area where you list out your various projects. These projects are deadline specific and you complete set of defined tasks that will lead you to a completed project by the deadline date. Once the project is complete you can archive the project. 

Areas of focus are quite different because they have no deadline date, or at least no fixed deadline date. An example of this would say if you run a blog. Each week there will be tasks you need to complete to write and publish a blog post, but the blog itself has no deadline date because you are writing and publishing every week. So you have an area of focus called “blog” and inside that will be your recurring writing tasks and maybe some maintenance tasks you need to perform from time to time. 

Now, the changes come when you have a specific project related to your blog. Let’s say for example you decide to redesign your blog. Now you have a project because the redesign of your blog will have a deadline—a date you want to complete the redesign by. When this happens you can create a project for the redesign in your active projects list for the redesign. 

So hopefully that gives you a basic definition of what a project is an what an area of focus is.

So let’s look at Jim’s specific question. If you have multiple roles such as a parent, a community leader you are going to have regular recurring tasks related to those roles. If you don’t that’s great, but you should still create the area of focus—I’ll explain in a moment. 

For those regular recurring tasks related to your roles, you can put them into your area of focus. For example, if you spend Saturday afternoon doing activities with your kids, then you may have a recurring task to talk with your kids about what they would like to do each week. Or if you are a community leader you may have to prepare an agenda for a monthly meeting. All these tasks can go into your area of focus related to your role. Weekly activities with your kids and preparing the monthly agenda recur, individually you could argue they have deadlines, but as they recur regularly I would not consider them as individual projects. That would just make your active projects list overly long and unnecessary. 

Other areas of focus that you can use are for things like professional development, or side projects such as a part-time business you are building. Way back in the late 1990s I had a part-time business as a mobile Djay. Most weekends I was doing a disco somewhere and each event I did was different. Sometimes it was a wedding and in the UK it is the tradition for the bride and groom to start off the dancing with their favourite song. That meant for each wedding we did I needed to find out from the bride and groom what their first dance song was to be. If I did not have it—and in those days we used CDs, not MP3s—I had to go out and buy it. Other things I needed to find out each week was what kind of event we were doing, was it a birthday? A company event or something else. I also needed to know the age group of the people attending as that affected the kind of music I played. All these questions needed answering before the event, so I used a checklist in my Franklin Planner that contained all the questions I needed to ask our agent. I would have a recurring call every Wednesday with our agent to get the answers to these questions. Today I would be using my digital to-do list and it would be much simpler as I would create a recurring task in my Djay area of focus to call my agent each week and have the questions I needed to ask in a templated checklist for each event in Evernote. 

If you have multiple professional roles such as I do, I am an English teacher and a have my productivity business. I separate these out in my areas of Focus. I have my English teaching business as an area of focus and single action tasks such as doing something for a student can be placed in there. Likewise, if I need to do something for my coaching clients, I would place that task in my productivity business’s area of focus. 

When you have multiple roles, and I think most of us have if we really sat down to think about it, having a separate place for your areas of focus can help to keep you on top of everything going on in your life. Now we have to remember there are only 24 hours in each day and we can’t change that. Mondays for me, for example, I have a lot of English classes and so on Sunday when I plan my day, I know to look exclusively in my teaching areas of focus folder because that is where my focus for the day is going to be. Likewise, on Friday afternoons I do all my video recording, so on a Thursday I look at my YouTube Channel area of focus as well as my content scheduling board to see if there is anything I need to focus on when I do my recordings. When I check my calendar I know if I have a coaching call the next day and who with, so I can review my notes and client feedback and do some preparation for the call before the call itself. 

Another great reason to use areas of focus is you can decide if you want to spend a month focused on a particular area of your life. The end of the year holiday season has just ended and for many of 'sus we may have eaten and drunk a little too much. So it's get back in to shape season. So, if you have an area of focus for your health and fitness you may decide that this month you will put a lot more focus on that area and do a lot more activities related to losing weight and getting fit. 

One more thing and I know this is specific to you, Jim, is if you want to build a professional speaking career. This again would be an area of focus. Each new speaking engagement may become an active project, but to build the career there are going to be a number of activities you will need to do each week. You will need to be developing your expertise in your chosen area, you will need to be communicating with agencies and conference organisers etc. These will be ongoing tasks and so should be an area of focus. So if you decide to send out five to ten profiles to event organisers and agencies each week you will have a task to do that either on a specific day or spread out over a few days each week. 

So, if you do have multiple roles, and I am sure you do as we all do in some form or another, I would spend some time thinking about the different roles you have and decide which ones you want to focus on. Then create an area of focus for each one. Do not worry if some have nothing in them at the moment. It could be that you decide that some of those areas you do not want to focus on right now. When you do have the list put together though make sure you review them each week when you do your weekly review. That way nothing is being forgotten and you can decide if you want to put some focus on those areas during the following week. 

Remember, an area of focus does not have a deadline date, a project does. You may have projects that come from an area of focus from time to time and you can create that project in your active projects list. As soon as the project is complete you can archive it and put the management of the project in your areas of focus if it needs managing. 

I hope that has answered your question, Jim and thank you for sending it in. 

Don’t forget, if you have a question you would like answering on this podcast get in touch either by email ([email protected]) or by DMing me on Twitter or Facebook. 

Thank you so much for listening and it just remains for me to wish you all very very productive week.

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about managing your work and family life to create better balance.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own Productivity System

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes

Script

Hello and welcome to episode 63 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

Happy New Year and welcome to the first podcast of 2019. I hope you all had a wonderful new year celebration and are ready to hit 2019 with all your energy and enthusiasm to make it the best year you’ve ever had. 

Before we get started I want to tell you about my new coaching programme. I’ve recently redesigned my coaching/mentoring programmes to better fit those of you who feel you need that little extra help. I know mentoring and coaching isn’t for everyone, but for those of you who want a more personalised approach, to get some help developing your own system and help in setting and achieving your goals, then take a look at my new programmes. There’s a programme for everyone ranging from a single session to a whole year of sessions. 

The results you can gain from having a coach—someone to guide you and help you to develop your goals, productivity system and to keep you accountable for the things you have set yourself to achieve is an investment in yourself that will give you an incredible return. So check out my programmes. It would be an honour to be able to help and guide you to your best year yet.

Okay, onto this week’s question which means 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 Netanel. Netanel asks:

I don't have much time in my day-to-day, I take a subway to work and vice versa (100-120 minutes each way) working in Hi-tech (9-10 hours a day), I'm married and also a father to 2 kids so I want to invest in my family some quality time. How can I achieve my personal tasks?

A wonderful question, Netanel, and a very difficult question to answer to kick off 2019. 

This question is really about creating a balanced work and personal life. Now, I am not a great believer in what is commonly called “work/life balance”—in today’s world with us being connected pretty much 24 hours a day, it’s almost impossible to build strict barriers between our working lives and our personal lives. To me, the stress involved in trying to maintain strict barriers between our work and our personal lives is just not worth it. It’s far better to accept that sometimes our work is going to encroach into our personal time and likewise our personal lives will encroach occasionally into our work time. Have you ever had to take time away from your work to visit your dentist or have to pick your kids up from school early? I’m sure you have. 

Now in your case, Netanel, you have a number of unique challenges. The first is your travel time. You are commuting 3 to 4 hours a day! That’s a tremendous amount of time to be travelling to and from work. Tie that to working up to 10 hours a day, you are leaving yourself with very little time for your family. In fact, if you are getting six hours of sleep, then you have pretty much no time for your family. Something is going to have to give. 

There are two options here. The first and the better one of the two is to have a conversation with your boss. Ask your boss if you could work from home two days a week. 

Working in hi-tech presumably means most of your work is done by computer and therefore having to be in the office every day of the working week is unlikely. It might be a convention to be in the office every day, but if you were to be honest with yourself, do you really need to be in the office for 5 or 6 days a week? Of course, you may have to att

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about managing your work and family life to create better balance.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own Productivity System

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes

Script

Hello and welcome to episode 63 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

Happy New Year and welcome to the first podcast of 2019. I hope you all had a wonderful new year celebration and are ready to hit 2019 with all your energy and enthusiasm to make it the best year you’ve ever had. 

Before we get started I want to tell you about my new coaching programme. I’ve recently redesigned my coaching/mentoring programmes to better fit those of you who feel you need that little extra help. I know mentoring and coaching isn’t for everyone, but for those of you who want a more personalised approach, to get some help developing your own system and help in setting and achieving your goals, then take a look at my new programmes. There’s a programme for everyone ranging from a single session to a whole year of sessions. 

The results you can gain from having a coach—someone to guide you and help you to develop your goals, productivity system and to keep you accountable for the things you have set yourself to achieve is an investment in yourself that will give you an incredible return. So check out my programmes. It would be an honour to be able to help and guide you to your best year yet.

Okay, onto this week’s question which means 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 Netanel. Netanel asks:

I don't have much time in my day-to-day, I take a subway to work and vice versa (100-120 minutes each way) working in Hi-tech (9-10 hours a day), I'm married and also a father to 2 kids so I want to invest in my family some quality time. How can I achieve my personal tasks?

A wonderful question, Netanel, and a very difficult question to answer to kick off 2019. 

This question is really about creating a balanced work and personal life. Now, I am not a great believer in what is commonly called “work/life balance”—in today’s world with us being connected pretty much 24 hours a day, it’s almost impossible to build strict barriers between our working lives and our personal lives. To me, the stress involved in trying to maintain strict barriers between our work and our personal lives is just not worth it. It’s far better to accept that sometimes our work is going to encroach into our personal time and likewise our personal lives will encroach occasionally into our work time. Have you ever had to take time away from your work to visit your dentist or have to pick your kids up from school early? I’m sure you have. 

Now in your case, Netanel, you have a number of unique challenges. The first is your travel time. You are commuting 3 to 4 hours a day! That’s a tremendous amount of time to be travelling to and from work. Tie that to working up to 10 hours a day, you are leaving yourself with very little time for your family. In fact, if you are getting six hours of sleep, then you have pretty much no time for your family. Something is going to have to give. 

There are two options here. The first and the better one of the two is to have a conversation with your boss. Ask your boss if you could work from home two days a week. 

Working in hi-tech presumably means most of your work is done by computer and therefore having to be in the office every day of the working week is unlikely. It might be a convention to be in the office every day, but if you were to be honest with yourself, do you really need to be in the office for 5 or 6 days a week? Of course, you may have to attend meetings, but you could arrange it so your meetings were only on certain days of the week. And if there was a situation where you were required for a meeting, you could always attend digitally via tele or video conference. 

Now I do understand that between countries there are different cultures at play. I live and work in South Korea and only in the last year or so has the idea of flexible working arrangements come here. But more and more of the people I work with are now enjoying more flexible working arrangements. Coming in to work a little later in the morning so parents can take care of their children. Being able to work from home a couple of days a week etc. This is, after all, the twenty-first century. 

The thing is in your situation, Netanel, if you want to spend a little more time with your family, then you are going to have to have the conversation with your boss. The great thing here is what’s the worst that could happen? Your boss saying no. So that leads me on to the second and third options for you.

Either you are going to have to move closer to your workplace or you are going to have to find another job closer to your home. 

You see the biggest problem here is your commuting time. If you could reduce your travel time by two hours a day, you would get those two extra hours a day to spend with your family. Now, finding a home closer to work may be your best option, but in today’s working environment where a job is not necessarily for life—we tend to change jobs more frequently than our parents did—that might not necessarily be a practical solution. 

Another question to ask is is there a faster way to get to and from work? In my case for many of the clients I visit each week, there are a number of ways I could get there. I could drive—often the longest way because of the traffic in Seoul, I could take a bus, not usually the fastest way really or I could take the subway. Usually, the subway is the fastest but not always. One of the clients I visit each week is just a ten-minute taxi ride away from my home, yet if I took the subway (the cheaper option) it would take me at least 45 minutes. Sure, the taxi is more expensive than the subway, but if I look at the time cost involved, then, in reality, the taxi is the cheapest option. So research your travel options. See if there is a faster way to get to your workplace and then do a time/cost analysis. How much is your desire to spend more time with your family worth to you? A good company would support the extra travel cost be giving you a travel allowance—another possibility for your boss to help you. 

Finally, you could begin the process of finding another job either closer to your home or one that will allow you more flexible working arrangements. The truth is, if I had a conversation with my boss about being able to work from home a couple of days a week and my boss gave a flat no, then that would be an indication to me to change my job for a more modern, out looking company. A company that respects family time and the need to allow employees to work in an environment that works for them. 

Like I said at the beginning, your question is unique, Natanel because it does not involve changing the way that you work, it involves changing the way your company works. Working 9 to 10 hours a day is not unreasonable—a little excessive, but not unreasonable—but travelling 3 to 4 hours a day just to get to your work each day is unreasonable. That is where I would focus my attention. Find ways to change that. 

To me, your best option is to have that conversation with your boss. That will be the least disruptive and offers the best solution all around. Being able to work from home a couple of times a week would allow you more quality time with your family. 

The next best option would be to review your travelling arrangements. Is there a faster way to get to your office? If so, how much more will it cost you? If it is a lot more, then perhaps your company would be willing to pay you an allowance to cover the extra cost. Again, you will need to have the conversation with your boss on that one. 

Finally, the two most disruptive options. Either you move closer to your work, or you change your job. Again, this is something only you can decide. 

Reducing your commuting time needs to be your priority. That is where you can save time that can be better spent with your family. Review all your options, how you travel, moving house or moving jobs. 

Jobs come and go, families do not. Prioritising your family over your company is always the right thing to do. Of course, we do have to make compromises. Part of our family arrangements is we need to provide an income, but that income should not be provided at the expense of your family, and the quality time you have to watch your children grow and quality time spent with your wife. That is why I would always advise you to put family first, not your company and if your company is not going to allow you to spend more time with your family, then it’s time to change your company.

I hope that has helped, Natanel. I know the choices you are going to have to make are not easy, but your family is worth it. Go talk to your boss, see if you can find a way to work from home a few days a week and failing that, see if you can find a faster way to get to your office. 

Best of luck. 

Don’t forget, if you have a question you would like me to answer, then please email me at [email protected] or DM me on Facebook or Twitter.

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

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, once again I delve into my Productivity Mastery series to bring you a special episode.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own Productivity System

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

The original video

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel

Using Evernote To Manage A Project

Script

Hello and welcome to episode 62 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week I bring you another episode from my YouTube channel’s Productivity Mastery series and give you 6 ways to supercharge your productivity.

Normal service will resume next week and please don’t forget if you have a question about productivity, time management or goal planning, then just get in touch with me by email ([email protected]) or by DMing me on Facebook or Twitter. 

Okay, let’s take you in to the world of Productivity Mastery with this episode on supercharging your productivity. Enjoy.

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, once again I delve into my Productivity Mastery series to bring you a special episode.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own Productivity System

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

The original video

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel

Using Evernote To Manage A Project

Script

Hello and welcome to episode 62 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week I bring you another episode from my YouTube channel’s Productivity Mastery series and give you 6 ways to supercharge your productivity.

Normal service will resume next week and please don’t forget if you have a question about productivity, time management or goal planning, then just get in touch with me by email ([email protected]) or by DMing me on Facebook or Twitter. 

Okay, let’s take you in to the world of Productivity Mastery with this episode on supercharging your productivity. Enjoy.