How to Stay Productive When Everything Changes

Let me take some pressure off. Your problem is not discipline. Your problem is not organization. Your problem is not that you have yet to stumble upon the perfect schedule. And your problem is not that the folks at home demand too much of your time. The problem is this: there’s not enough time to get everything done that you’re convinced—or others have convinced you—needs to get done. That’s a quote by Andy Stanley, an author and church leader and perfectly captures the topic of this week’s episode. Enjoy. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Time Sector System 5th Year Anniversary The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 384 Hello, and welcome to episode 384 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. It’s easy to create a productivity system on paper, working with theories and concepts. The challenging part comes when that system is confronted with real-life events. The upset customer who demands immediate action, a colleague off work sick and a boss who thinks you can drop everything and work on their latest wheeze. It’s not that these productivity systems don’t work, they do, it’s that a system is only as good as the person adopting it is willing to slow down and consider how important the demand in front of them really is. It’s also understanding what you have control of and what you don’t. You don’t have control over whether your daughter’s after-school class is cancelled at short notice or not. You do have control over putting in place a contingency in case it happens. In the real world, things change fast. An urgent email you received at 9:15 a.m. Is resolved on its own by 9:28 a.m. A meeting you spent all weekend preparing for get’s cancelled two hours before it’s due to begin. The list is endless. Yet, having some kind of system still helps you. And that’s what this week’s question is about. How to use a productivity system in a fast moving, chaotic world. And so, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Alan. Alan asks, hi Carl, how would you advise someone that is struggling to set up a system because their work is always changing. My customers expect me to be available all the time and my boss keeps calling meetings without any notice. I never have any time to do my work. Hi Alan. Thank you for your question. I think it was Jim Rohn that taught me to understand that there are a lot of things in life that we cannot control. Obvious ones would be the weather, or a train breaking down that prevents you from getting into work on time. Yet, there are also things like phone calls and urgent messages that can significantly change your plans for the day. This is what I suppose we call life. Life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of our plans. However, it’s always been like that. Life has always been unpredictable and yet many people have managed to deal with it. There are a number of things you can do that will help you to stay on track, yet have the space and time to deal with the unexpected when they occur. The first one is when planning the week, don’t focus on tasks, focus on objectives. What I mean by this is when you focus on scheduling tasks for the week, it’s likely 60% or more will not get done. Either you don’t have the time or things change and they no longer need to be done. Too much can change over seven days. I’ve seen people carefully schedule out an exercise plan for the week, only to pick up a calf strain on Tuesday that prevents them from doing any more running for the rest of the week. Yet, had they set the objective to exercise four times that week, the calf strain would be a minor inconvenience and perhaps to fulfil their exercise objective they could go swimming or to the gym and do non-leg exercises instead. Similarly in the work environment, if you were to plan out a project’s tasks for the week, and you keep getting pulled into a last minute “urgent” meetings, the chances are by the end of the week you will have done practically none of the tasks you scheduled for yourself. If you had instead set the objective of doing some work on the project, you would give yourself more flexibility to choose what to do given the changing circumstances of your week. This way, although you may have only done three things on the project you still completed your ...