Your Time, Your Way

In this week’s episode of The Working With… Podcast I answer a question about David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

Limited Time Bundle Sale website

Todoist and Drafts 5

Evernote and Drafts 5

Your Digital Life 2.0 Online Course

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own Productivity System

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Hello and welcome to episode 35 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 have a question about GTD and what I think is the most important part of the whole GTD philosophy. It’s a great question because all five parts are important in their own way. But there is one part that if you don’t do it, nothing else will work. 

Before I get into the answer though, I want to let you guys know that I recently updated my learning centre. I’m very excited about this because it takes me to the next stage of my online course development for all of you. To celebrate this launch, I have a HUGE sale on my bundled courses. I have taken off over 50% these courses and you can take advantage of this special offer. All you need to do is go to the special offer page—a link to which is in the show notes—and buy yourself a bundle. When you do buy a bundle you will get all future updates for free as well as any new courses I do. You are in a way, inflation proofing yourself. So go on. Pick yourself up a bundle today. The offer ends at Midnight on Monday, but for you wonderful people I have secretly extended the offer to lunch-time on Tuesday. 

If you really want to get yourself better organised and become more productive, this is a wonderful opportunity to get yourself some valuable education, an education you can take with you everywhere you go. 

Okay, onto this week’s question. So 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 Paul in Canada. Paul asks, Hi Carl. I’m a big fan of GTD (Getting Things Done) and was wondering what, in your opinion is the most important part of GTD?

Before I go… Don’t forget to get yourself enrolled in one of the bundles. This will be something you will never regret.

Good question and this is a question I have pondered over the years. I’ve switched between all parts of the GTD process, but in the end, to me, there really is only one part that is crucial. That is the collecting (or capture in GTD speak) 

The reason for this is if you are not collecting your commitments, appointments and ideas, it doesn’t matter how elaborate or beautiful or well organised your system is, if you have nothing to put in it, it is never going to work. The whole point of any productivity system is you are getting out of your mind the stuff that you are trying to remember and to get them into a trusted place where you can make decisions about them when you have more time. If you are not collecting anything, then you have no decisions to make and you will be trying to remember everything in your head. And, as we all know, that is not the best place to keep stuff you want to remember or make a decision about later. 

Part of the reason many people feel overwhelmed and overstressed is that they are trying to remember everything in their heads. Now out heads were not designed to be memory banks. Our heads were designed to recognise patterns—we walk outside and we see rain, that tells us we need to either put on raincoats or grab an umbrella. Or if we absolutely must remember to take a book to work with us, we place the book in front of the front door so that our brain will see it in the morning and say: “ that doesn’t look right. Why is the book there? Oh yes, I must take that book to work with me” Our brain is seeking out patterns and things that are out of place. That triggers a response and that response results in an action. 

The problem here is when we try and trust our brains to remember things like call that customer, reply to that email and buy milk. All these little tasks have no triggers unless they are written down in a trusted place. When you’ve had a long day at work, fighting fires and dealing with all the issues, as you go home you are thinking about all the things you need to remember for tomorrow, you are not going to remember to buy the milk. Our brains are just not that good at things like that. 

When you have a great collecting system though, you can get all those things you have to remember out of your head. When you trust the place you put them in, then you start to make progress. 

Of course, if you’re not processing or organising what you collected, then things will fall apart at that level, but if you don’t collect, then everything falls apart and you will feel overwhelmed and stressed trying to remember everything that comes your way. 

Once you understand the importance of collecting everything in a trusted place, you can then begin to develop ways of making the collecting process as fast and easy as possible. In my early days of GTD, I carried a little pocket sized notebook with me everywhere, but I soon realised that was just another thing to remember to take with me. It wasn’t the most efficient way to do it. When the iPhone finally launched in Korea in 2009, that was when I really got my collecting system working. 

Our phones are always with us. We carry them everywhere and smartphones are basically pocket-sized powerful computers. In this little device, we have access to all the information we could want. We also have the ability to collect any information we want in almost any format. That could be text, a photo, a PDF file, an email or a webpage. There’s no need to be carrying around scraps of paper, napkins or any other random materials with scribbled down numbers and don’t forgets. Everything can be collected in one place. 

That though does create it own challenges. Yes, you can now collect everything very easily in almost any format, but where do you store it? Where can you collect all this stuff so when you need to see it you know exactly where it is? Now, this is the reason I have always advocated creating as simple a system as you can. I like to think of it as my “one project” one app for one purpose. 

What I mean by this is having one app for each of the different types of things you collect. So, if I make an appointment, it goes straight into my calendar. If I have an idea, it goes straight into my notes app and if I have a commitment or task it goes into my to-do list manager. 

So, in my case: random thoughts and ideas - Evernote. Tasks and commitments - Todoist and events and appointments - calendar. Each app has a purpose, each app deals with a different purpose. 

Now, I know many of you may be thinking, couldn’t you do that with one app and sure this is possible. But I’m thinking a little more long-term than that. When I am organising, I like to compartmentalise. When I am organising my tasks and projects I want to be working in my task manager. When I am developing ideas and projects I like the free-flowing functionality Evernote gives me. And of course, when I need to know where I am going to be, I will look at my calendar. It’s just the way I like to compartmentalise. You, of course, may be different and prefer everything collected in one place. There really is no right or wrong way of doing this. The important thing is whichever way you do it, it works for you. 

So, if collecting is the most important part of any productivity system, the next question to ask is how do I optimise my collecting system?—How do I make collecting as easy and fast as possible? 

One of the things I’ve found over the years is if your collection system is not efficient and fast you will not collect everything. You will continue to trust your head to remember things. When you optimise your collecting for speed and ease, there is no reason to resist and you will soon develop the habit of getting everything into your system. 

Now I do a complete review of my system every three months. I look at all areas of my system, from collecting and organising to doing (the COD system - Collect, organise, do) But the one area I spend most time on is looking at how I collect things. I look to see if I resist collecting certain types of stuff. If I am, I work out the reasons why and what can be done to remove the barrier. Most of the time it is because I have too many steps. I apply what I call “the subway test”. This is where I ask: can I collect an idea, task or appointment while transferring trains while on the Seoul subway system? Essentially can I capture using one hand and my phone? If the answer is yes, I see if there are any ways this could be sped up. Using Siri for example, or are there any new capturing apps like BrainToss or Drafts? Are they faster than Drafts? Etc etc. 

So for me, the speed and simplicity of collecting stuff is the most important part of the GTD system. I would guess over the years I have spent hour and hours fine-tuning my system so I could make this part of the GTD system as fast and efficient as possible. 

For those of you wondering how I have things optimised at the moment, then I use Drafts. Drafts is a little note-taking app with a huge amount of power. It allows me to collect everything from a task, an appointment to an idea into just one app. Once the task, appointment or idea has been collected I can send it either direct to my Todoist inbox, my Evernote inbox or my calendar. I’ve been using Drafts for years now and hands down it is by far the best collecting tool I have come across. 

The app sits in my dock on both my iPhone and iPad and it has become a simple habit for me to simply open up the app, type or dictate my thought and send it off to the right place. 

Now for those of you interested, I have done a few videos on how I capture on my YouTube channel. Most recently, following an update to the Drafts App, I did a video on how I use it with both Evernote and Todoist. I will put a link to these videos in the show notes so you can see it all in action. 

So there you go. In my humble opinion, if you really want to optimise your productivity system, begin by looking at how you collect stuff. Ask yourself the question “what can I do to make collecting as fast and as efficient as possible “ and really get fast at it. 

It does take time to get into the habit of collecting and the habit-forming is part of the process, but once you are there, you really will have developed a process that will alleviate most of the stress and overwhelm you feel.

Thank you very much for listening to this podcast. Don’t forget if you have a question you would like answering you can contact me either by email, Twitter or Facebook. All my contact details are in the show notes. 

And finally, if you really want to take your productivity to the next level and are serious about creating a life of joy, accomplishment and purpose then get yourself enrolled in one of my bundles while they on this amazing special offer. Remember, you only have 24 hours to get yourself enrolled to do it today. Get that into your collection system and get it done. 

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 David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

Limited Time Bundle Sale website

Todoist and Drafts 5

Evernote and Drafts 5

Your Digital Life 2.0 Online Course

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own Productivity System

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Hello and welcome to episode 35 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 have a question about GTD and what I think is the most important part of the whole GTD philosophy. It’s a great question because all five parts are important in their own way. But there is one part that if you don’t do it, nothing else will work. 

Before I get into the answer though, I want to let you guys know that I recently updated my learning centre. I’m very excited about this because it takes me to the next stage of my online course development for all of you. To celebrate this launch, I have a HUGE sale on my bundled courses. I have taken off over 50% these courses and you can take advantage of this special offer. All you need to do is go to the special offer page—a link to which is in the show notes—and buy yourself a bundle. When you do buy a bundle you will get all future updates for free as well as any new courses I do. You are in a way, inflation proofing yourself. So go on. Pick yourself up a bundle today. The offer ends at Midnight on Monday, but for you wonderful people I have secretly extended the offer to lunch-time on Tuesday. 

If you really want to get yourself better organised and become more productive, this is a wonderful opportunity to get yourself some valuable education, an education you can take with you everywhere you go. 

Okay, onto this week’s question. So 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 Paul in Canada. Paul asks, Hi Carl. I’m a big fan of GTD (Getting Things Done) and was wondering what, in your opinion is the most important part of GTD?

Before I go… Don’t forget to get yourself enrolled in one of the bundles. This will be something you will never regret.

Good question and this is a question I have pondered over the years. I’ve switched between all parts of the GTD process, but in the end, to me, there really is only one part that is crucial. That is the collecting (or capture in GTD speak) 

The reason for this is if you are not collecting your commitments, appointments and ideas, it doesn’t matter how elaborate or beautiful or well organised your system is, if you have nothing to put in it, it is never going to work. The whole point of any productivity system is you are getting out of your mind the stuff that you are trying to remembe

In this week’s episode of The Working With… Podcast I answer a question about handling digital distractions while working from home.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

Your Digital Life 2.0 Online Course

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own Productivity System

The Weekly Objectives Planning Sheet Download

The Ultimate Goal Planning Course

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Hello and welcome to episode 34 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.

Digital Distractions. They are everywhere! Not just your phone and computer, but on billboards, in your car and on your TV. You just cannot escape them anymore. And that poses a problem for all of us. How can we get any quality work done if we are constantly being interrupted by a beep, ring or a breaking news banner? Well, that’s the topic for this week’s question.

Before we get into the answer for this week’s question, just a quick announcement. For all of you wonderful people enrolled in my Your Digital Life 2.0 Online course, I released the fourth supplemental class last week. You can access it via your learning centre login page. If you haven’t enrolled yet, and struggle with getting all your stuff—your commitments, projects, appointments and life—organised then this course is designed to help you by giving you the skills and know-how to develop your system so that nothing can stop you. You will learn to prioritise, build your goals into your daily life and start living the life you want to live. Details of the course are in the show notes. 

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

This week’s question comes from Simon. Simon asks, "How do you deal with digital distraction when working at home"?

Ahhh distractions, and not just any distractions, digital distractions and when we are working from home. Thank you, Simon, for this question. I know this one is a real issue for many people, whether or not you work from home, and if not dealt with can lead to missed deadlines and a lot of stress.

Fortunately, there are a few strategies you can follow that will help. But for these to work you are going to have to put your phone down. For some of you, I know that is going to be very difficult. But the reality is, as with any distraction, you always have a choice whether to acknowledge the distraction and let it into your life or not. 

The first, obvious thing you can do is turn off those beeps and pings. You don’t need them. You are going to be looking at your phone or computer within the next few minutes anyway—we all do these days. Why do you need some kind of sound to also tell you you have a new email, a new What’s App message and a Facebook mention? Just turn the sounds off. Instead, leave the badge app icon on. What this does is leave that little red number on the app if you have anything unread. If your most important apps are on your home screen you will see that little red circle next time you pick up your phone and let’s be honest, we all look at our phones perhaps a little too frequently.

Whether you want anything showing up in your notifications list is entirely up to you. I would suggest you do an audit of your apps, both on your desktop and mobile devices and turn off any notifications from apps that are not going to be giving you anything urgent. Facebook, Twitter etc. I like to have important messages show up in my notification screen. I have my messaging apps, my email of course and any missed calls. The problem is when you download a new app, by default most of them get added to your notifications screen. My guess is you will find most of them are not required so you can turn them off. 

I keep Facebook notifications on in my notification screen simply because my mother uses Facebook to communicate with me. But for all other social media my notifications are off. 

The next thing you can do is to get serious about your work time. Working from home gives you a lot more freedom about when you sit down and do work. With that freedom also comes the opportunity to waste time checking email, social media and the news. And we all know these can take you journeys of pure time procrastination heaven. Not good if you want to get work done. 

Use your calendar to block time out for focused work. Let’s say you block out 2 hours between 9 am and 11 am for focused work and allow yourself between 11:00 am and 11:30 am for communications. How you define communications is up to you. It could mean just email, or you could broaden it to include social media messages. Allow yourself some flexibility here. You’ve just done a period of two hours, uninterrupted work. You deserve a reward of some sort.

If you work for a company that monitors you while you are working have the discussion with your boss. See if you can have that two hours of uninterrupted time. Don’t just assume your boss will not allow it. It’s surprising how amenable to time blocking bosses are when they can see the benefits to the quality of your work it will bring. 

Another great way to minimise distractions, if you can do it, is to get up early. Last week I had an early morning meeting cancel on me. I was already awake having just completed my 5-6 am studying and found I had a full morning of uninterrupted time. So, at 6 am I got on with the writing work I needed to do that day. By 8 am all my writing was complete and I had begun doing the less important stuff. By 9:30 am I had finished all my work for the day and I received no digital distractions at all. Purely by accident, I had spent three-and-a-half hours doing work with no distractions and I got all the days work done. That goes to show just how much time you lose to distractions every single day. 

I’ve written about this story in the first edition of Your Digital Life, and it’s worth repeating. Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, and my writing hero used to write when he was staying at his holiday home in Jamaica every January to March. Between 9 am and 12 pm every day. He would close the windows to his writing room and just write. his wife and guests staying with him knew not to disturb him and he just got on and wrote. Back in the 1950s, there were no mobile phones or computers connected to the interweb and he had no landline phone at his house, Goldeneye. It was famously sparse—we would call it minimalistic today. It was just him, his typewriter and his imagination. No distractions at all. Ian Fleming managed to write a full novel each year in just six weeks using this method. 

But times have changed and we live in a very different world from 1950s Jamaica. We have a lot more digital distractions, however, I believe we should sometimes try to recreate the environment from 1950s Jamaica and just turn everything off and focus on the work we want to get done. I actually do this every Monday morning. Monday’s is when I write my weekly blog post. Between 10 am and 12 pm I sit down at my desk and write. My phone is on do not disturb, and there is no one around to distract me. For me, it is two hours of pure heaven. I can fully understand why Ian Fleming managed to write a full novel in 6 weeks. Those 2 hours of undistracted time is some of the most productive hours I have each week. 

Another area you can look at is when you are at your most creative. What I mean by at your most creative is when your mind is freshest and is primed for doing work. I always thought I was a night owl. But I found that actually, I am much more creative in a morning. This means I am much less susceptible to distractions in the morning. While I can do work in the evening, I find I am much more likely to run down rabbit holes of digital procrastination and so the quality and quantity of my work suffers. Once I discovered this, I began scheduling my important work in the mornings and my less important, or less time-sensitive work in the evenings. That gave my productivity a huge boost. I was much less tempted by Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and felt much more comfortable with my phone off. 

Finally, another trick I use is setting deadlines to finish work. Currently, my wife is in China and each evening we have a FaceTime call. We talk around the same time every evening so I know roughly what time I need to get my evening admin work done by. This acts not only as an incentive to get my work finished it also gives me a nice deadline each evening. Our minds are very good at getting work done by a set time if we set a finish time. Quite often, particularly when we work from home, our finish time can be quite open. We think if I don’t finish by dinner-time, I can come back after dinner and continue for another hour. The problem here is your mind doesn’t have any sense of urgency when you do this. If you begin the day by fixing the time you will finish you will find you work much faster and are less likely to allow yourself to be distracted by the non-important. There is a sense of urgency and that will work in your favour.

Well, I hope you found these tips and tricks useful. Remember, your phone or any digital device is not your master and you should never ever let them become your master. Digital devices are your servants. They are there to serve you and not the other way round. If you have important work to do then give your servants time off and focus yourself on the work that needs doing. 

Thank you very much for listening to this episode. Don’t forget to check out the Your Digital Life 2.0 online course, there is a lot of great stuff in there that could turn you into a productivity ninja with a system you create that you trust and helps you to get your most important projects and goals done. 

 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 handling digital distractions while working from home.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

Your Digital Life 2.0 Online Course

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own Productivity System

The Weekly Objectives Planning Sheet Download

The Ultimate Goal Planning Course

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Hello and welcome to episode 34 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.

Digital Distractions. They are everywhere! Not just your phone and computer, but on billboards, in your car and on your TV. You just cannot escape them anymore. And that poses a problem for all of us. How can we get any quality work done if we are constantly being interrupted by a beep, ring or a breaking news banner? Well, that’s the topic for this week’s question.

Before we get into the answer for this week’s question, just a quick announcement. For all of you wonderful people enrolled in my Your Digital Life 2.0 Online course, I released the fourth supplemental class last week. You can access it via your learning centre login page. If you haven’t enrolled yet, and struggle with getting all your stuff—your commitments, projects, appointments and life—organised then this course is designed to help you by giving you the skills and know-how to develop your system so that nothing can stop you. You will learn to prioritise, build your goals into your daily life and start living the life you want to live. Details of the course are in the show notes. 

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

This week’s question comes from Simon. Simon asks, "How do you deal with digital distraction when working at home"?

Ahhh distractions, and not just any distractions, digital distractions and when we are working from home. Thank you, Simon, for this question. I know this one is a real issue for many people, whether or not you work from home, and if not dealt with can lead to missed deadlines and a lot of stress.

Fortunately, there are a few strategies you can follow that will help. But for these to work you are going to have to put your phone down. For some of you, I know that is going to be very difficult. But the reality is, as with any distraction, you always have a choice whether to acknowledge the distraction and let it into your life or not. 

The first, obvious thing you can do is turn off those beeps and pings. You don’t need them. You are going to be looking at your phone or computer within the next few minutes anyway—we all do these days. Why do you need some kind of sound to also tell you you have a new email, a new What’s App message and a Facebook mention? Just turn the sounds off. Instead, leave the badge app icon on. What this does is leave that little red number on the app if you have anything unread. If your most important ap

In this week’s episode of The Working With… Podcast, I answer my own question about waking up at 5 AM.

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website

The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own Productivity System

The Weekly Objectives Planning Sheet Download

The Ultimate Goal Planning Course

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

Hello and welcome to episode 33 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.

In this week’s episode a change from the usual format. This week, the question comes from myself and is about why I decided to join the 5 AM Club, made famous by Robin Sharma and what I have discovered about waking up at this un-Godly hour and why I believe you should be doing the same.

But, before we get into this week’s question I’d like to ask any of you wonderful listeners who also watch my videos on YouTube if you have anything you would like me to cover in my Todoist, Evernote or Working With Work series, please get in touch and let me know. I love answering your questions and I would like to open this up to my YouTube channel as well. All my contact details are in the show notes, but if you won’t look at those, you can simply email at [email protected]

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

This week’s questions from… Carl. Carl asks: So, Carl why are you waking up at 5AM every morning?

Good question Carl.

Well, I guess most of you have heard people say that waking up early is a positive habit to have. It energises you, it gets you ahead of the day and it put you in front of everyone else because very few people do it. And sure, I also had heard all those things, but honestly, I was never really tempted to join those early birds. I preferred to allow myself to think I was a night owl and that mornings were just not for me. It’s a very comfortable way to think and it meant I could continue deluding myself into thinking I was simply not made to wake up early. 

But being comfortable is not really a good state to be in. When you are comfortable you are not growing. You are not developing and you are not becoming better. Over time if you allow yourself to remain comfortable you begin to stagnate and when that happens you soon find your whole life stagnates. You no longer get those promotions, your health begins to decline, you stop making new friends and seeking out amazing people and mentally you stop learning. Comfortable is a state that should scare you. 

This is why I made the decision to start waking up early. I knew I was making excuses for not waking up early by deluding myself into thinking I was not an early bird. I also needed to find time to study Korean language to fluency over the next twelve months and after many failed attempts of studying in the evening there really was only one option left. Study Korean between 5AM and 6AM every morning. That knowledge has been spinning around in my mind for a few months now. So, I decided to do something about it. I began waking up at 5AM on Monday last week to study Korean. 

Now, I’m not going to deny it, it was not easy waking up at 5AM. The first day was hard, so was the second. But I persisted. It takes a lot of self-discipline and, I believe, more importantly, a purpose. I have a clear purpose for waking up at 5AM. I want to be fluent in Korean by June next year. The benefits to me of being fluent in the language of the country I live in far outweigh the luxuries of staying in bed. The thing that has really surprised me is that after years of telling myself I cannot wake up early, I can. And it is not as difficult as I led myself to believe. Now, after two weeks of doing this—yeah, I know it’s still early days—I love waking up early. I no longer feel exhausted during the day and although I do go to bed an hour earlier than I was doing before, nothing much else has changed to the way I do my work. 

I have also found I enjoy learning Korean—something after many failed attempts before I have never done—and I feel I am progressing. There have been days where I felt I didn’t learn very much, but I have noticed even after a short period of time I can read hangul faster (the name of the Korean characters) and I feel more confident when using taxis, ordering coffee and shopping. 

So, should you join the club? Yes, I think you should. But there are a few things you do need to know before you start. 

It’s all well and good waking up at 5AM, but if you have no plan to do something constructive with the hour between 5 and 6 you are going to waste the opportunity it gives you. If all you do is check your social media, email and worry about work, then you are not making the most of this wonderful hour. I have made it a rule not to check my email or social media during this time. This one hour is for study. Once I am fluent in Korean I will find something else to learn. This is a very special time. No one is disturbing me… Well, my little dog is. He doesn’t understand why we are waking up so early. You need to make the most of this quiet time. You can use it for exercise, meditation, planning or learning or a combination of all these things. What you do need to do is have a purpose. A reason for waking up early. Without that, you are going to find it very difficult to find the motivation for lifting your head off your pillow when your alarm goes off. 

You should also be ready to adjust your evening routine a little. The first couple of days I went to bed around the same time I always had done. This was a mistake. Because I was waking up around an hour earlier than I used to do, that lost hour of sleep was really hurting my effectiveness and productivity during the day. After a couple of days, I realised I needed to go to bed earlier to compensate for the earlier start. That made a very big difference to the way I felt during the day. Now. Instead of going to bed at 11:30pm, I am am heading off to bed around 10:30pm. It does mean I have to get my work finished by 10pm so I can go through my evening routine and plan the next day, but overall all I have had to do is spend less time reading what my friends have been up to on Facebook and Instagram and that is no real sacrifice. 

You need to be committed to this. If you break the chain, so to speak, and skip one or two days, you are not going to maintain the progress. I am being flexible. I don’t wake up at 5 am on a Saturday or Sunday. I wake up at 7 am instead. I used to wake up around 8 am on a weekend, but as I am waking up an hour earlier during the week, I decided to wake up an hour earlier on a weekend. I also made sure I changed what I was studying on a weekend too. Instead of studying via notebooks and books, on a weekend I watch videos of news readers and interviews in Korean. This way I can learn the right intonation and enunciation in my target language. Whatever you decide to do with your extra hour, make sure if you do decide to maintain it on a weekend you do something a little different. It adds a little variation and variety and this will keep you fresh and prevent you from going stale. 

Whatever you decide to do with your one hour, the biggest benefit you will find is you gain an hour of ‘me-time’. In a world where so many people are complaining about not having enough time to do the things they want to, when you begin waking up at 5 am and you spend that first hour of the day only on yourself you will feel a lot less stressed. It gives you time to think, time to work on yourself and time to do the things you want to do. This is your hour to do with whatever you want to do. Spending the time on developing yourself—becoming a better you—can only be a good thing. You can start that hobby you have always wanted to start, you can read the books you have always wanted to read, you can do the exercise you have always wanted to do or you can learn the language you have always wanted to speak. All these reasons are win wins for you. This is your hour after all. 

Well, thank you very much for listening to this episode. I hope it has given you some motivation to get yourself out of your bed early in the morning and begin a new life of learning, self-improvement and growth. Remember, this is your time—time to spend on yourself—don’t waste the opportunity. Great things await you and all it takes is lifting your head off the pillow at 5 am in the morning. Good luck and please let me know how you get on and what you are doing with your special hour. 

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

In this week’s episode of The Working With… Podcast, I answer my own question about waking up at 5 AM.

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Hello and welcome to episode 33 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.

In this week’s episode a change from the usual format. This week, the question comes from myself and is about why I decided to join the 5 AM Club, made famous by Robin Sharma and what I have discovered about waking up at this un-Godly hour and why I believe you should be doing the same.

But, before we get into this week’s question I’d like to ask any of you wonderful listeners who also watch my videos on YouTube if you have anything you would like me to cover in my Todoist, Evernote or Working With Work series, please get in touch and let me know. I love answering your questions and I would like to open this up to my YouTube channel as well. All my contact details are in the show notes, but if you won’t look at those, you can simply email at [email protected]

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

This week’s questions from… Carl. Carl asks: So, Carl why are you waking up at 5AM every morning?

Good question Carl.

Well, I guess most of you have heard people say that waking up early is a positive habit to have. It energises you, it gets you ahead of the day and it put you in front of everyone else because very few people do it. And sure, I also had heard all those things, but honestly, I was never really tempted to join those early birds. I preferred to allow myself to think I was a night owl and that mornings were just not for me. It’s a very comfortable way to think and it meant I could continue deluding myself into thinking I was simply not made to wake up early. 

But being comfortable is not really a good state to be in. When you are comfortable you are not growing. You are not developing and you are not becoming better. Over time if you allow yourself to remain comfortable you begin to stagnate and when that happens you soon find your whole life stagnates. You no longer get those promotions, your health begins to decline, you stop making new friends and seeking out amazing people and mentally you stop learning. Comfortable is a state that should scare you. 

This is why I made the decision to start waking up early. I knew I was making excuses for not waking up early by deluding myself into thinking I was not an early bird. I also needed to find time to study Korean language to fluency over the next twelve months and after many failed attempts of studying in the evening there really was only one option left. Study Korean between 5AM and 6AM every morning. That knowledge has been spinning around in my mind for a few months now. So, I decided to do something about it. I bega