Your Time, Your Way

This week's episode answer a question from many people about what exactly do I put into my Evernote. 

LINKS

My Drafts Review Video

https://youtu.be/yEhU8wxvDo4

Don't forget, if you have a question you would like me to answer about productivity, goal planning or creating a successful life, then email me [email protected]  or DM me on:

www.twitter.com/carl_pullein

https://www.facebook.com/CarlPulleinProductivity/

Subscribe to my newsletter to get all my content conveniently in your inbox every Friday:

http://eepurl.com/cOAmvz

SCRIPT:

In this week’s episode of The Working With Podcast, I answer a question about Evernote I am frequently asked.

Hello and welcome to episode 12 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show. 

Since starting this podcast last November the one question I am asked most often is how and what I use Evernote for. This question is easy to understand, because Evernote can be used for so many things. It can be used for collecting your ideas, your memories, your kids’ drawings and paintings as well as more businessy stuff such as expense receipts, meeting notes and performance tracking. 

So, in this week’s episode I decided to go through the kind of stuff I keep in Evernote and hopefully it will give you some ideas of what you too can use Evernote for. 

So, without further ado, let me hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question… 

This week’s question comes from many people: Jill, David, Penny and Tony to name a few. The question is: Hi Carl, what do you put into your Evernote?

Okay, before we get in to the details of this question, I should say I have been using Evernote since September 2009. So I am nearing my 9th year anniversary. 

Quite simply Evernote changed everything for me. Before Evernote, i had notes and files all over the place. Now, because I am a naturally organised person, these notes and files did have a place, usually kept in folders in my bookshelf next to my desk. Notes, were often kept in notebooks and all my important paper documents were kept in their appropriate files. It was organised, but it still took time to find what I was looking for when I needed it. 

Then along came Evernote. Even back then it was easy to take a picture of something and send it to Evernote. And this is what I started doing. First in was important receipts that I needed to keep for the guarantee. Then it was my utility bills and soon pretty much all important paper documents I needed to keep were scanned into my Evernote. In the early days I needed to scan many of these documents in using my computer’s printer/scanner, but as time went by and technology in our digital devices improved, I was able to scan documents simply by using my iPhone. 

My organised mind, created a number of Notebooks and tags for these documents and very soon it just became natural to scan in documents to Evernote. I think, if I am being honest, I never actually made the decision to go paperless, it just evolved over a few years. 

I’ve always used Evernote to capture my ideas and notes. That was what I used Evernote for when I first started using it. Scanning documents came later. 

Over the years, what I keep in Evernote has grown, and as the stuff I keep there has grown, so my organisation of Evernote has evolved. Now, for example, I use less notebooks and more tags. That was a big change in the way I use Evernote a couple of years ago. (thank you, Enrico Nahler) 

The one thing that has always kept me with Evernote by the way is Evernote’s search function. I have tried other note taking apps over the years, but the one thing Evernote does better than all its rivals is in it’s search. It is fast (very important) and you can search for almost anything within a note. Just hitting COMMAND J on a Mac (sorry I don’t know what the function is on Windows) will search for notebooks, tags or keywords. It takes no time at all and it is so easy to find exactly what you are looking for. If, for example, I am planning a trip to Singapore and will have a few days free, I can go in to Evernote, type “Singapore” in the box and I will get all my notes related to Singapore and I can choose the places I want to visit. 

So there you have one use of Evernote I use. I keep a note for each city or country I would like visit and list out all the places I would like to see while I am there. I also keep important information such as visa requirements and other such information. 

I also keep all my utility bills in there now. As soon as a bill arrives I will use my phone and scan the bill in and send it to my inbox. Then when I process my inbox I will tag it appropriately and send it off the the right notebook. 

I also have a special tag I call Incubator. My incubator is used for ideas I am developing. I get ideas at all times of the day. It is so easy to open up Evernote using 3D Touch on my phone and capture the idea. Then as I develop the idea over time, I store it in my Incubator tag which is kept in my favourites bar. This way it is really easy to get the note back and add other ideas I have to the note as they come up.

My journal is now in Evernote. The reason I switched over to Evernote was simply because Evernote is with me everywhere I go. If I have a few minutes while in a taxi, on a bus or train and I want to write in my journal I can do so. Then, at the end of the year, I print out that year’s journal entries and create a book from it and I store those in a storage box. In the future it will fantastic to be able to go in and read what I wrote in years gone by. 

One area of interest I have is with classic British clothing. I love the history and culture behind items of clothing. For example, the business suit we all know and sometimes wear today has military origins going back centuries. Overcoats and pea coats also originated from military clothing. It’s a fascinating story where the different styles we all love to wear come from. I have a tag for articles related to clothing I like and can reference these when I am deciding if I want to buy a new coat or suit. 

Likewise I have a tag for clothing and shoe suppliers. I have my favourite brands, I think we all do, and as I live in South Korea some suppliers can’t or won’t ship to Korea. Over the years I have found suppliers who do ship here, so I keep their details in Evernote and if I decide I want to buy a new sweater, I can go in to Evernote search for “sweaters” and up comes my favourite sweater manufacturer, N Peal in London (they do ship to Korea by the way) Same for my shoes. My favourite show maker is a company called Crockett and Jones. Now some department stores do sell Crockett and Jones here in Korea, but they are prohibitively expensive here. It is actually cheaper to buy direct from the UK. I know my sizes at Crockett and Jones so I can simply pull up my Crockett and Jones note and I have the order details right there. 

I also keep details on my favourite fashion icons. I have tags for people like Cary Grant and Steve MacQueen and in there I keep pictures of them and details of the clothes they wore. Steve MacQueen’s sunglasses in the movie Thomas Crown Affair were made by Percel. I have a pair which came from an article I found while surfing around the internet one day years ago, found this article on the sunglasses worn in the movie, clipped the note and a few months later I ordered a pair. 

Other more businessy things I keep in Evernote are things like my student lists. I keep a note for each student and client I teach whether that is my communication students or my productivity mentoring students. These notes contain all the things we are working on and what we have worked on. That way, when I am with the student I have a list of all the things we have worked on and I can see what needs working on without me having to carry that information around in my head. Again, I tag each note with the student’s name. That way it is very easy to call up the note when I need it. 

 I have a tag called “content” in that tag, I keep notes for each of my YouTube series, such as Todoist, Evernote and work. I can then add ideas to the list for future episode when they come to me. I also use a fantastic app called Drafts which allows me to add ideas for these directly to the note without having to open Evernote. I did a YouTube video on Drafts a few months ago, and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes for those of you interested in it. 

My weekly social media content is also planned out in Evernote. I keep a template for this and copy the template every Sunday when I plan out next week’s social media content. During the week, when I am busy doing my usual weekly work stuff, it makes life so easy to just open up that note and do that day’s social media work. 

And of course, meeting notes. Depending on the situation, I either type notes directly into Evernote, or use my paper notebook and after the meeting just scan the notes in. Once again, this makes finding meeting notes months later, so easy. It’s almost unfair on anyone not using Evernote. It really does work as my external brain. 

And there you go, pretty anything I want to keep gets put into Evernote. All my interests and hobbies like, my unhealthy fascination on all things related to James Bond and my love of Photoshop. I keep a tag for these. Tutorials for Photoshop, interesting facts about Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond and my writing hero. Anything like that gets sent to Evernote. As you can imagine, over the last 9 years I have collected an incredible source of information that is tailor-made for my interests and needs. 

And that’s something I should stress. Make Evernote yours. Keep whatever you like in there. Create a notebook and tagging system that works for the way you think and just sit back and enjoy everything you keep there. As time goes by you’ll love going in to your Evernote for all the memories it serves up for you. 

Thank you for listening to this episode. I do hope you enjoyed it as much as I did making it. Don’t forget if you have a question you would like me to answer, all you have to do is email me - [email protected], DM my on Facebook or Twitter or fill out the question sheet on my website carlpullein.com.

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

This week's episode answer a question from many people about what exactly do I put into my Evernote. 

LINKS

My Drafts Review Video

https://youtu.be/yEhU8wxvDo4

Don't forget, if you have a question you would like me to answer about productivity, goal planning or creating a successful life, then email me [email protected]  or DM me on:

www.twitter.com/carl_pullein

https://www.facebook.com/CarlPulleinProductivity/

Subscribe to my newsletter to get all my content conveniently in your inbox every Friday:

http://eepurl.com/cOAmvz

SCRIPT:

In this week’s episode of The Working With Podcast, I answer a question about Evernote I am frequently asked.

Hello and welcome to episode 12 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show. 

Since starting this podcast last November the one question I am asked most often is how and what I use Evernote for. This question is easy to understand, because Evernote can be used for so many things. It can be used for collecting your ideas, your memories, your kids’ drawings and paintings as well as more businessy stuff such as expense receipts, meeting notes and performance tracking. 

So, in this week’s episode I decided to go through the kind of stuff I keep in Evernote and hopefully it will give you some ideas of what you too can use Evernote for. 

So, without further ado, let me hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question… 

This week’s question comes from many people: Jill, David, Penny and Tony to name a few. The question is: Hi Carl, what do you put into your Evernote?

Okay, before we get in to the details of this question, I should say I have been using Evernote since September 2009. So I am nearing my 9th year anniversary. 

Quite simply Evernote changed everything for me. Before Evernote, i had notes and files all over the place. Now, because I am a naturally organised person, these notes and files did have a place, usually kept in folders in my bookshelf next to my desk. Notes, were often kept in notebooks and all my important paper documents were kept in their appropriate files. It was organised, but it still took time to find what I was looking for when I needed it. 

Then along came Evernote. Even back then it was easy to take a picture of something and send it to Evernote. And this is what I started doing. First in was important receipts that I needed to keep for the guarantee. Then it was my utility bills and soon pretty much all important paper documents I needed to keep were scanned into my Evernote. In the early days I needed to scan many of these documents in using my computer’s printer/scanner, but as time went by and technology in our digital devices improved, I was able to scan documents simply by using my iPhone. 

My organised mind, created a number of Notebooks and tags for these documents and very soon it just became natural to scan in documents to Evernote. I think, if I am being honest, I never actually made the decision to go paperless, it just evolved over a few years. 

I’ve always used Evernote to capture my ideas and notes. That was what I used Evernote for when I first started using it. Scanning documents came later. 

Over the years, what I keep in Evernote has grown, and as the stuff I keep th

Don't forget, My Time And Life Mastery January Sale offer ends Midnight Jan 31st. Get yourself enrolled today and get 50% off the course, PLUS... A free copy of my latest book, Your Digital Life 2.0 AND... The 2018 Time And Life Mastery Workbook. 

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about deciding what goes where and when.

Hello and welcome to episode 11 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show. 

One of the most frequent questions I get is about managing apps used to maintain a great productivity system. I recommend you have a calendar, a to-do list manager, a notes app and a cloud storage drive. I’ve been recommending this set up for years and I do so because I know it works. But once you have those apps, managing what goes in them can cause problems, particularly if you have never had a system in place before.

This week’s question is related to this whole area and I think my answer and recommendations can help you if you also suffer with this problem. So, enough of me talking. Let me now hand you over to the recently recovered mystery podcast voice, for this week’s question. 

For this week’s question, Nicola writes from France:

How do you distinguish between what you put in Evernote and what you put in Todoist? I have a really hard time with this and find I have tasks and notes all over the place. Thanks, Nicola

Thank YOU Nicola for an excellent question.

This is a problem I find many people have. Because of the way some of these apps are trying to be a one stop solution for all our needs it can become quite confusing where we should be putting things. Evernote, for example, has the ability to create checklists and reminders and become a to-do list manager. Todoist, my other app of choice, has the ability to store notes and files. Because of this it is very easy to start dumping notes in Todoist and to-dos in Evernote. 

The problem I have found when an app tries to be all things is that in order to achieve this, the app has to make compromises. Usually, the interface becomes messy and difficult to read, or in order to get things to work properly, you need to have a doctorate in astro physics, something, most of do not have. I personally, have an allergy to complexity. My brain usually just switches off when faced with anything complex—I lose interest. 

Evernote, for example, puts your reminders at the top of your notes list. Now, on a desktop that works okay, not great, but okay. Evernote on a mobile device becomes much more difficult and finding your to-do list for the day, becomes an exercise that is just way to complex, for me. 

Todoist again, does not work great with notes. Sure you can add notes to individual tasks, and you can add notes to the project itself. But once you have checked off the task, the notes disappear with it. This means if you want to retrieve your notes at a later date you have to go hunting round in the archive. Not the best use of your time, I can assure you. 

This is why I have always maintained what I call hard edges between my apps. My to-do list manager contains the tasks I need or want to do “the whats”. My note taking app contains all the support materials, the “hows” if you like. And my cloud drive, contains the files I am working to make the project happen. This makes it so much easier for me when I come to processing stuff I have collected. If it is something that is telling me what to do, ie. “Call Jennifer about next week’s workshop”, then that

Don't forget, My Time And Life Mastery January Sale offer ends Midnight Jan 31st. Get yourself enrolled today and get 50% off the course, PLUS... A free copy of my latest book, Your Digital Life 2.0 AND... The 2018 Time And Life Mastery Workbook. 

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about deciding what goes where and when.

Hello and welcome to episode 11 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show. 

One of the most frequent questions I get is about managing apps used to maintain a great productivity system. I recommend you have a calendar, a to-do list manager, a notes app and a cloud storage drive. I’ve been recommending this set up for years and I do so because I know it works. But once you have those apps, managing what goes in them can cause problems, particularly if you have never had a system in place before.

This week’s question is related to this whole area and I think my answer and recommendations can help you if you also suffer with this problem. So, enough of me talking. Let me now hand you over to the recently recovered mystery podcast voice, for this week’s question. 

For this week’s question, Nicola writes from France:

How do you distinguish between what you put in Evernote and what you put in Todoist? I have a really hard time with this and find I have tasks and notes all over the place. Thanks, Nicola

Thank YOU Nicola for an excellent question.

This is a problem I find many people have. Because of the way some of these apps are trying to be a one stop solution for all our needs it can become quite confusing where we should be putting things. Evernote, for example, has the ability to create checklists and reminders and become a to-do list manager. Todoist, my other app of choice, has the ability to store notes and files. Because of this it is very easy to start dumping notes in Todoist and to-dos in Evernote. 

The problem I have found when an app tries to be all things is that in order to achieve this, the app has to make compromises. Usually, the interface becomes messy and difficult to read, or in order to get things to work properly, you need to have a doctorate in astro physics, something, most of do not have. I personally, have an allergy to complexity. My brain usually just switches off when faced with anything complex—I lose interest. 

Evernote, for example, puts your reminders at the top of your notes list. Now, on a desktop that works okay, not great, but okay. Evernote on a mobile device becomes much more difficult and finding your to-do list for the day, becomes an exercise that is just way to complex, for me. 

Todoist again, does not work great with notes. Sure you can add notes to individual tasks, and you can add notes to the project itself. But once you have checked off the task, the notes disappear with it. This means if you want to retrieve your notes at a later date you have to go hunting round in the archive. Not the best use of your time, I can assure you. 

This is why I have always maintained what I call hard edges between my apps. My to-do list manager contains the tasks I need or want to do “the whats”. My note taking app contains all the support materials, the “hows” if you like. And my cloud drive, contains the files I am working to make the project happen. This makes it so much easier for me when I come to processing stuff I have collected. If it is something that is telling me what to do, ie. “Call Jennifer about next week’s workshop”, then that goes into my to-do list manager. If I receive an itinerary for the workshop from Jennifer, then that would go into my note taking app. And if I have to prepare a presentation for the workshop, then the Keynote file would be stored in my cloud drive. 

Of course, a lot of things can be going on in the background in this scenario. When I talk to Jennifer, she may say: “I’ll email you the itinerary later today”. Okay, now I am waiting for something. I would create a task in Todoist telling me I am waiting for a file from Jennifer and put that under my waiting for label. If I am to prepare a presentation for the workshop, I would have a note in my notes app with my ideas and sketches for slide design and layout. But the thing is, each item has it’s place and each item is labeled or tagged appropriately so I can find what I need, when I need it instantly. 

And that’s the goal really. “Everything in its place and a place for everything”. 

What I have found is when someone is starting out on the road to greater productivity and organisation, they have to spend time thinking about where something should go. On a Monday morning, after a good night’s sleep making these decisions is easy. But late on a Thursday evening, after a day of back to back meetings and you are exhausted from your efforts, these decisions are not so easy. And that is when things begin to slip. 

Your To-do list manager’s inbox is full of tasks and notes. Your cloud drive has files you are working on all over the place and you haven’t touched your note taking app. This is where taking fifteen to twenty minutes out to tidy things up can be a huge help. Maybe you can come back from your lunch a little earlier and get things organised, Or you could come in to work a few minutes early and get the stuff into the right places. Either way, those fifteen to twenty minutes should be considered an investment. Because later in the day they can save you hours of searching and thinking. 

I’ve been following this philosophy for years now and the processing takes me very little time. In fact, when I look at my inbox, I just naturally start processing. This is something you will get better and faster at doing over time. But it is a habit you need to develop. At first it will take you more time than you anticipate, that’s normal. You are after all, changing the way you think. But if you stick at it, you will get faster and faster at it. 

Another tip here is to have tools for specific purposes. If I am attending a meeting, I always take my notebook with me. I prefer writing meeting notes by hand as it just feels more natural to me. After the meeting, I pull out my todos and enter those into Todoist, cross them off once they are in Todoist and then use Evernote’s scanning app and scan the notes directly into my Evernote inbox. Because the to-dos have been crossed off and entered into my to-do list, I know that what’s left is a note related to the meeting. 

Now of course, I do not always have time to pull out the to-dos immediately after the meeting, but I know the note’s not been scanned, so at the next available opportunity I can quickly scan the note for to-dos, enter them in to Todoist and cross them off from the note. This process takes around two minutes to do and I usually find I do this while I am waiting for the next meeting to start anyway. 

Part of achieving greater personal productivity is really in having the right system set up and those systems naturally fit in with your personality. This is why I know that there is no perfect system. The way my brain works and processes things is likely to be very different from the way your brain works and processes things. I like things to be in their place and if they are not I feel uncomfortable. My wife on the other hand is the complete opposite and feels very comfortable with things all over the place. Much to my frustration. 

But no matter how your brain works, having a system in place that allows you to find what you need with the least effort and time, when you need it should always be your goal. Mixing up your to-dos with you notes and files is a recipe for an unsuccessful attempt at getting yourself better organised. You will spend far too much time looking for stuff and not enough time working on stuff. But if you have a system in place that you know where everything is, you will quickly get so much better at making these decisions with little to no effort at all. It’s just something you need to stick at. 

My advice, is don’t be tempted by apps that try to sell you on their ability to be all things for all situations. Those apps, in my experience are far too compromised to work effectively and they don’t have the hard edges between the various roles they are trying to be. Choose separate apps for each part of your productivity system. Make sure those apps can be link to each other and keep your to-dos in your to-do list manager, you events on your calendar, your notes and reference materials in your notes and the files you’re working on in your cloud drive. Doing things this way will give you a much cleaner, more efficient system.

Thank you for listening and if you have a question you would like answering on this show, please get in touch either by email: [email protected] or you can DM me on Twitter or Facebook. Lists for all these places are in the show notes.

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

Contact Me:

c[email protected]

www.twitter.com/carl_pullein

Facebook

LINKS

For more information on my Mentoring Programmes and how I can help you to become better organised and more productive, click here

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about coping with a huge list of active projects.

Hello and welcome to episode 10 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show. 

I hope you are all having a great start to the new year. My year hasn’t started too well. The first week I had a stomach bug, and the second week I came down with a cold. So, I decided the third week of this month was the start of the new year and so far, touch wood, my year is now going fantastically!

Anyway, on to this week’s show. This week’s question throws up a very common difficulty for many people in personal productivity and in particular when using GTD. (that’s Getting Things Done by David Allen) This is the one where you end up with a huge list of active projects which in turn leaves you with an overwhelming list of projects that just depresses you every time you open your to-do list manager. In this week’s episode, I want to offer you some guidance on how to avoid this happening to you. 

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 Ben. Thank you, Ben.

Ben asks: You park your projects in someday maybe folder. I’ve got over 60 running parallel projects in my work folder. I am running a tombstone business. How can i handle this for a better overview, thank you. Ben

Another fantastic question. Thank you, Ben

To really answer this question we need to step back a little and look at the big picture and what we are capable of actually doing each day. 

We humans only get 24 hours each day. In that time we need to sleep, eat, shower and communicate with our friends and families. So, while in theory, we have 24 hours, we really only have a fraction of that time to do work. Even the most workaholic types among us, are not capable of doing work consistently over a period of 24 hours. If we tried, we’d be burnt out within a few days. So, let’s get realistic about what we can achieve on a daily basis. Sixty parallel running projects is not going to happen. Either you are going to miss deadlines, or the quality expected for each project is not going to be what is expected. 

From my own experience, I know that to create an online course takes around 10 to 15 hours of planning and 15 to 20 hours to record and edit. There are another 5 to 10 hours required after that for study sheet writing and uploading the videos. So in total to create an online course requires 30 to 40 hours. In theory, that means an online course could be created in one week, given the average working time is between 35 and 40 hour per week. But, what that does not take into consideration is all the additional admin, communications and meetings that are also part of an average week. Even trying to allow two weeks to do this project would be unrealistic, as I always have other projects on at any one time. So, I have learnt that to create an online course (a project) actually takes 1 month to do. 

By allowing 1 month to complete an online course project, I also allow myself time to work on other projects. But, that still means I need 10 hours a week to work on the project. If I multiply those ten hours to say fifty hours for the week, that means theoretically, I can only work on 5 projects at any one time. But, again, that does not take into consideration additional admin, communications and meetings, so realistically, you are only going to be able to work on 3 to 4 projects at any one time. 

Of course, if you own your own business, you can hire people to work on some of your projects and multiply the number of active projects accordingly, but you will always find you are limited by the one resource you cannot change, time. 

This is where the Someday | Maybe folder comes in to play. At any one time, there will be projects that are time sensitive. Projects that have a deadline sometime in the next 3 to 6 months. These projects should be your active projects. These are the ones that have deadlines coming up in the near future and so these should be in your active projects folders whether they are work or personal. All other projects, where the deadlines are over 6 months away can be placed in your someday | maybe folder and for now, left idle. I usually have a reminder task inside these projects to remind me to have a quick look at the project in case there is something I need to do, but for the most part these projects are idle until one of my other, active projects has been completed, Then the next time sensitive project gets moved up into the active project folder. 

However, another area I find people struggle with when they have all their projects lined up in their active projects folders is they date everything. So, each day they end up with over 50 tasks to do and not-surprisingly end up not completing their daily tasks. This then often leads to people quitting using a to-do list manager, complaining that it takes too much time to manage, or to-do lists don’t work for them. The truth is, they are not working their to-do list managers properly, and yes, of course, they become endless lists of work that never gets done. 

I go back to my point at the beginning of this podcast. You have to be realistic about what you can achieve in a day, a week and a month. Biting off more than you can chew is never going to be a good strategy for anyone. 

So if you are suffering from an overwhelming active projects list, then here’s what you can do:

Often one of the first things I notice when I am mentoring people through my mentoring programme (details in the description if anyone is interested… Oops I’m plugging there) is that some people are confusing their day to day activities or areas of focus with projects. For example, marketing activities. Unless the you are creating a new marketing campaign, then any marketing activity will be part of your day to day job. This is an area of focus, not a project. For my productivity business, I promote many of my products on Twitter. These need scheduling every day. This is not a project. This is an area of focus that just needs doing every day. However, creating a launch campaign for my latest book, that’s a project. It is a one off event that lasts around two months. Once the launch window is over, any further marketing activities will become part of my everyday marketing area of focus. 

Likewise, creating my YouTube videos, could in theory be considered a project, but in reality, I do these every week and the only thing that changes is the topic. The number of videos I create each week remain pretty consistent. That makes these videos an area of focus, not a project. I have scheduled time to do the recording and editing each week. 

So, how do you define a project and an area of focus. Well, this is really up to you and your preferred way of working, for me an area of focus is anything that has to be done, but has no end date. It’s just part of my work, but does take my life further forward. A routine is different in that a routine is anything I have to do that does not take my life further forward. For example, taking the garbage out or updating my admin sheets each day. How you define taking your life further forward is another one of those things that only you can decide.

The thing is when you are clear about what your real projects are, and what your areas of focus are, you can make sure your areas of focus become just part of your daily work and you can then focus on allocating sufficient time to your real projects. Things that have a deadline. 

For those of you working with clients, I would create each job I do for a client as a project. In my mentoring programme, each mentee, I think that what you call them, have their own project. Each programme has a set curriculum if you like and I can make sure that each part of the programme is completed when it needs to be completed. I keep the number of active mentees limited to ten at any one time so that I am not overwhelmed. (Incidentally, I do have a couple of places available at the moment... oops another plug...sorry)

So there you have it. If you do find you have a large, overwhelming list of active projects, first go through them to see if any of them require nothing for six months. If so, move them to your someday | maybe folder with a task set to remind you to look at it at some point in the near future. Once you have done that, go through your active projects and see if any of those projects are really areas of focus (don’t have an end date) and move them to your Areas Of Focus folder.

I know these tips will not actually reduce the work. The work still needs to be done anyway, but these tactics will help you to reduce a long list of projects that have become overwhelming and that is really the goal. 

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

LINKS

For more information on my Mentoring Programmes and how I can help you to become better organised and more productive, click here

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about coping with a huge list of active projects.

Hello and welcome to episode 10 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show. 

I hope you are all having a great start to the new year. My year hasn’t started too well. The first week I had a stomach bug, and the second week I came down with a cold. So, I decided the third week of this month was the start of the new year and so far, touch wood, my year is now going fantastically!

Anyway, on to this week’s show. This week’s question throws up a very common difficulty for many people in personal productivity and in particular when using GTD. (that’s Getting Things Done by David Allen) This is the one where you end up with a huge list of active projects which in turn leaves you with an overwhelming list of projects that just depresses you every time you open your to-do list manager. In this week’s episode, I want to offer you some guidance on how to avoid this happening to you. 

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 Ben. Thank you, Ben.

Ben asks: You park your projects in someday maybe folder. I’ve got over 60 running parallel projects in my work folder. I am running a tombstone business. How can i handle this for a better overview, thank you. Ben

Another fantastic question. Thank you, Ben

To really answer this question we need to step back a little and look at the big picture and what we are capable of actually doing each day. 

We humans only get 24 hours each day. In that time we need to sleep, eat, shower and communicate with our friends and families. So, while in theory, we have 24 hours, we really only have a fraction of that time to do work. Even the most workaholic types among us, are not capable of doing work consistently over a period of 24 hours. If we tried, we’d be burnt out within a few days. So, let’s get realistic about what we can achieve on a daily basis. Sixty parallel running projects is not going to happen. Either you are going to miss deadlines, or the quality expected for each project is not going to be what is expected. 

From my own experience, I know that to create an online course takes around 10 to 15 hours of planning and 15 to 20 hours to record and edit. There are another 5 to 10 hours required after that for study sheet writing and uploading the videos. So in total to create an online course requires 30 to 40 hours. In theory, that means an online course could be created in one week, given the average working time is between 35 and 40 hour per week. But, what that does not take into consideration is all the additional admin, communications and meetings that are also part of an average week. Even trying to allow two weeks to do this project would be unrealistic, as I always have other projects on at any one time. So, I have learnt that to create an online course (a project) actually takes 1 month to do. 

By allowing 1 month to complete an online course project, I also allow myself time to work on other projects. But, that still means I need 10 hours a week to work on the project. If I multiply those ten hours to say fifty hours for the week, that means theoretically, I can only work on 5 projects at any one time. But, again, that does not take into consideration additional admin, communications and meetings, so re

In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about managing multiple projects as well as multiple personal projects.

Hello and welcome to episode 9 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show. 

In this week’s show, I answer a question many people have about managing multiple personal and work-related projects. With so many people today having side-projects in their lives, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and lost. So, without any further ado, let me hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Neil. Thank you, Neil for your question. 

In the past, I know you've said to limit the number of active projects one has to avoid overload and overwhelm. However, due to the nature of my day job, I have about 5 concurrent work projects plus a couple personal projects. I am hitting a bit of a wall with being able to make steady progress because of being pulled in the different directions of so many simultaneous projects needing attention.

There are a couple of things you can do. The first is a pure Getting Things Done solution. Based on the book by David Allen. 

All work can be categorised into contexts. What this means that any given task, to be completed, needs at least one of three things. A tool, a place or a person. In Getting Things Done speak this is called “a context” So, for example, if you needed to create a presentation, then you would need a computer to do the work. So, “@computer” would be the context. If you needed to talk with your spouse about your son’s next cricket match, then the context would be your spouse. By following what I call a pure GTD approach, you would work from your content lists. So, if you are in front of your computer, the only list you can work from is your @computer list. If you are at the supermarket, the only list you can work from is your @supermarket list etc. 

 If you work from your contexts, ie. Only work on the tasks that you either have the right tools for, are in the right place or are with the right person you will be able to get on with the tasks that you can only work on at that particular moment. All the other tasks, tasks you either do not have the right tools for or are in the right place or with the right person can be forgotten about for now. You cannot do anything about them. 

 This is the logical way to manage this kind of situation, and when you trust it, it does work. If you are using a to-do list manager such as Todoist, then it is easy to open it up with the right label or filter (depending on how you want to work it) Sooner or later you will find your projects are completing. Remember, you can only work on one thing at a time, and by organising your work by context, you are not wasting time trying to figure out what to do next, because your situation will determine that for you. 

In the past, whenever I have ever felt overwhelmed by the amount of work I have on, it has always been because I have been trying to work on projects and not contexts. Once I have readjusted things and focused on contexts, I very quickly find I am no longer overwhelmed. 

Just as an aside, I should point out to anyone new to using contexts don’t go looking for other people’s contexts. They won’t work. I’ve done that in the past and I soon realised everyone is unique and have different tools, places and people they need to talk to. For someone based in an office, having a context of “office” makes sense. For someone like me who does not work out of an office and does a lot of writing work in coffee shops, a label @Coffee shop makes more sense. You need to figure out your own contexts. The Getting Things Done basic contexts are a good place to start, but you should modify them to fit better with your own personal circumstances. 

The second way would be to theme your days. You could say Monday is for project 1, Tuesday is for project 2, Wednesday for project 3 etc. This means that each project gets an equal amount of attention each week. Of course, this depends on the time sensitivity of each project. You may find you have a deadline for one project on Friday next week, and a second one three weeks later. In that situation, you may want to spend more time each week on the more time-sensitive project. 

One thing I find very helpful is to allow about an hour or two a day to do the random stuff that gets thrown at me. Preparing for this podcast takes me around two hours and I schedule two hours to do it on my calendar. At the same time, I have videos to prepare, classes to teach and student questions to answer. However, I make sure there is at least one hour a day free to deal with the random stuff that gets thrown up. Students trying to reschedule classes, issues related to my websites or online courses etc. That way I manage to keep everything in order and my responses to clients and students done in a timely manner.

There are other things you can do such as identifying which tasks would have the biggest impact on each project’s completion. Doing this as part of your weekly review means you can find time on your calendar to schedule a time to block off to really focus on those tasks. This is akin to Cal Newport’s Deep Work system. You do need to be in control of your work time to be able to do this, but I have found most bosses and clients are sympathetic when you ask to be left alone for a few hours in a quiet place to get on with some deep work. The problem, of course, is most people are too afraid to ask or assume they won’t be allowed and again, don’t ask and so never get left alone to do some deep work.  However, doing things this way you know on a weekly basis that the big tasks are getting done. If you have five projects, then finding one task from each project and making sure you get those tasks done by the end of the day on Wednesday means that Thursday and Friday can be focused on tiding the little tasks up. 

Another thing you could do is spend ten to fifteen minutes at the end of the day to identify which tasks you must complete the next day and make sure these are done before lunch-time the next day. Make sure you don’t have more than three tasks to do. By the way, this gamification of your most important tasks can add a little fun and a challenge to your workday. This then frees up the afternoons to catch up with all the other things pulling at you. The great thing about doing things this way is you have a wonderful feeling of accomplishment at the end of each day because you managed to get your MITs done before lunch. 

Again, I should emphasise that you can only do one thing at a time. No matter how many tasks, projects and things to do you have, you can only do one at a time. In my experience, a lot of time is wasted figuring out what to do next because the next action has not been properly identified. Being very clear about what the next action is will help you a lot. (I find most people are not) It also means you are spending less time on figuring out what you need to do next and more time on actually doing the necessary steps to take the projects to completion. 

I understand having a huge workload is difficult. But as I say, you can only work on one thing at a time and setting up your system so that you are able to get straight to work on the important things when you sit down to do you work is one step you can take to help you be more efficient and effective with the work you are doing. This way, David Allen and the whole GTD community stress the importance of the Weekly Review. I would go one step further and suggest the daily mini-review is just as important today because since the first edition of GDT was published in 2001, our work has grown exponentially with more distractions and inputs. It now more important than ever to be fully aware of what the next action is on any given project so you can get straight on to it when you start your work. 

To sum up then. If you find yourself overwhelmed with the amount of work you have to do, try focusing more on your contexts, rather than your projects. Make sure you are doing at least a weekly review so you are fully aware of the status of each project and build in a daily mini-review to identify what the next actions are on each project you are working on. This won’t reduce the work of course, but it will give you peace of mind knowing you are working on the important things and that each project you are working on is getting done. 

I hope you found this episode useful. Don’t forget it you have any questions about productivity, self-development or goal planning then email me, DM me on Facebook or Twitter or ask your question in the comments field on this podcast and I will be very happy to add your question to the list. 

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