Episodios

  • Whoever Controls Your Calendar Controls You: Mastering Executive Time Management

    Whoever Controls Your Calendar Controls You: Mastering Executive Time Management
    Jun 8 2025
    “Whoever runs your schedule is the most important person in your world as Leader. You need time to think, time to study and time to get the things done you came to leadership to do. Lose control of the schedule and you will fail.” That is a quote from former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. And it strikes at the heart of mastering time management. Today’s episode explores why your calendar is your most important productivity tool. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The 2025 Summer Sale 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 | 373 Hello, and welcome to episode 373 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. Whoever controls your calendar controls you. They can (and often will) destroy your plans for the day, prevent you from doing your most important work and be the reason you fail in your career goals. If you are a leader, you will likely have plans for your team. In order to implement those plans and move them to completion, you will need time. It’s up to you to find that time. Top leaders understand this. They are very strict with their calendars. Nobody but themselves has control of it. And, probably the most important factor of all, they have the confidence to cancel appointments if those appointments do not align with their weekly or daily strategic plan. And yes, it’s a confidence thing. Nobody, not even your boss, really has control over your time. You always have the option to negotiate an appointment or say no. In this week’s episode, I will share some ideas you can use to get control of your calendar and have the confidence to negotiate appointments and/or say no. So, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Karen. Karen asks, Hi Carl, I lead a team of sixteen people and am struggling to get my work done because my boss and team are always demanding meetings with me. Do you have any tips on protecting time for important work when you don’t have control of your calendar? Hi Karen, thank you for your question. This can appear to be a difficult change to make. Particularly if your team and bosses have become conditioned to you being available whenever they need you. One of most powerful lessons I learned in my early career was from the so—called “my office door is always open” concept. For those of you not familiar with this concept, it began in the late 80s or early 90s (possibly earlier). This was where bosses used to tell their employees my office door is always open. You can come and talk to me at anytime. Nice concept. It gave the impression that your boss was approachable. Yet in reality, it was not really a practical way to operate. It meant that bosses were constantly being interrupted—well, those that we not scary, anyway, The two most productive bosses I had in my early career did follow this policy, yet with one addition. That was to tell us that when their door was closed they were not to be disturbed. One of those bosses, would close his door every day around 2 pm. He would then use that time to get his most important work done. David, had a secretary, who would hold his calls too. If you needed David between two and four, you had to go through his secretary, Michaela and Michaela protected David’s time ruthlessly. Yet, for the other times in the day, David was available. He’d walk around the office from time to time asking if we were okay. He made himself available. What happened, was if we needed David for anything, we knew we had to catch him before 2 pm or wait until after 4 pm. I don’t recall anyone complaining. The Managing Partner of the firm respected it. And so did David’s clients—he was a partner in the law firm I worked at. The key to this working was David’s consistency. His team, bosses and clients all knew that David would not be available between two and four. Since then, every productive person I have met, has operated something very similar. They have periods of time in the day where they are not accessible. In that time they are doing their most important work. That period of time is generally at the same time each day. I remember, once being on a training course and the instructor, told us she would be available at any time after 11:00 am if we had any questions. That’s it. A simple sentence. “Available at anytime after 11:00 am”. I don’t recall any one of ...
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    15 m
  • From Burned Out to Balanced: The Three Pillars of Productivity

    From Burned Out to Balanced: The Three Pillars of Productivity
    Jun 1 2025
    Do you feel you have to push yourself every day just to stay on top of your work? Well, this week I’m looking at why this happens and what you can do to prevent it. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The 2025 Summer Sale 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 | 372 Hello, and welcome to episode 372 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. If you have ever watched a Formula 1 race, it can be easy to believe that from the moment the lights go out and the race starts, the cars go flat out until the end of the race. Ah, as if it were that simple. The truth is if a team tried to do this, they would be guaranteed to lose the race. Even though a race may only last ninety minutes, during the race the teams will need to conserve their tyres and fuel. Going flat out to the finish would degrade the tyres too quickly, which would mean they lose essential grip in the corners, and running out of fuel would be game over for a team. You are like that Formula 1 car. When you start your day you have a limited amount of energy and your ability to focus needs to be managed through the day. It’s not physical energy. Your body has a way to utilise your fat reserves to help keep you out of danger when necessary, physically. It’s your mental energy. That is limited. And it’s a lack of mental energy that results in you making mistakes, procrastinating and being unable to make a decision about what to work on next. It your mental energy that requires careful management each day. Getting home exhausted each day won’t do very much for your relationships. You won’t be in the mood to do very much, and having a conversation with your partner or kids won’t be a top priority. Yet, your family may have been waiting for you to get home to talk with you, play and just have some quality time. The good news is it doesn’t have to be that way. There are things you can do to preserve your mental energies so you arrive home feeling relaxed, fulfilled and ready to engage with your family. However, before we get to how to do that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Matt. Matt asks, Hi Carl, do you have any ideas on how to stop feeling constantly tired and using the weekends just to recover before doing it all again on a Monday? Hi Matt, thank you for your question. If you are constantly feeling tired, my first advise would be to go see your doctor. A constant feeling of fatigue or tiredness could have an underlying reason and it’s better to get that checked out first. If, your doctor reports there are no underlying illnesses, then it’s time to look at your lifestyle. As I wrote in Your Time, Your Way, there are three areas you need to keep in balance. These are the foundations of any productive life. They are: Sleep, movement and diet. Are you getting enough sleep for you? We are all different when it comes to the amount of sleep we require. Some of you may work well on six hours, while others may require eight or nine hours sleep. If you want to operate at your best each day, finding out how much sleep you need would be a first step. For years I thought I only needed six hours of sleep. Yet when I did the test that Matthew Walker, the sleep doctor, suggested, I discovered I actually needed seven hours twenty minutes. What is that test? I hear you ask. What you do is sleep with no alarm for seven days and calculate how much sleep you slept each night. Then you add the total number of hours you slept and divide that number by seven. That will give you roughly the number of hours of sleep you need. I did this experiment while I was on holiday—when I didn’t have to wake up at any particular time. That way I had no anxiety about not waking up on time. Now I make sure I get seven hours at a minimum. Movement does not mean you have to go to the gym or out running. If you look back to a time when fewer people were overweight, the 1950s for instance, there were very few gyms—and the gyms then were centred on specialised bodybuilding or competitive sports people. You didn’t see people jogging round parks either. Instead, people moved more. They walked, took the stairs, manually cleaned their houses and were more active in general. The statistics are shocking. In the 1950s, around 10% of the adult US population were classified as...
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    15 m
  • Half Your Life Is Over—Now What?

    Half Your Life Is Over—Now What?
    May 25 2025
    How important is it to develop your Areas of Focus? That’s the question I am answering this week. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Download the Areas of Focus Workbook Join the Areas of Focus 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 | 371 Hello, and welcome to episode 371 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. Why spend time working on your areas of focus when there’s already a ton of stuff to do and not enough time to do it? While very few people ever overtly ask that question, I recall asking myself that question when I was starting out on my productivity and time management journey in my twenties. It seemed such a waste of time when I had people to call, work to do and a multitude of other commitments waiting for me to deal with. The trouble was that while I was running around dealing with all the so-called urgent things, I was neglecting what was genuinely important to me. You know things like spending time with my family, reading books, and knowing what I wanted to do with my career. Those things felt like a luxury I just didn’t have time for. But what was I really doing? I was prioritising the unimportant over the important because I was addicted to being busy. And that’s not healthy. It destroys relationships, damages your health (mentally and physically) and just leaves you feeling empty and exhausted at the end of the day. So, with that said, let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Ben. Ben asks, Hi Carl, I hear you talk a lot about Areas of Focus. What advice would you give to someone who hasn’t got time to write out their areas of focus? To me, that doesn’t honestly seem like a good use of my time. Thank you Ben for your question. Let me briefly explain what your Areas of Focus are. We all share eight areas of life. These are: Family and relationships Career or business Health and fitness Lifestyle and life experiences Finances Personal development Spirituality Life’s purpose They all mean something to us. Yet, how we define them will be very individual. How we prioritise them will also be personal and will change as you go through life. When you are young your career and business area may be high on your priority list. Once you have a career or run a business, you may find other areas such as your life’s purpose and spirituality will rise up the list. I remember when I was in my twenties, I felt I was immortal. I smoked and enjoyed a beer or six on a Friday and Saturday night. Health and fitness was not a priority. When I reached thirty, I realised I was overweight and climbing the stairs was ridiculously hard. It left me puffing and panting embarrassingly. Something needed to change. So I reduced my drinking, eventually quit smoking and began running. Health and fitness shot up my list of priorities. The thing is, if you do not know how important these areas are to you, you will continue to ignore them. It’s surprisingly easy to develop horrible diseases such as diabetes if you have not prioritised health and fitness. And, of course, the elephant in the room. How many relationships have been destroyed because a person’s work takes over their life? Your time is limited. According to Oliver Burkeman, you have around 4,000 weeks. That’s it. And if you’re 40 years old, you’re around half way through those 4,000 weeks. Scary thought, right? So spending time defining what these areas mean to you is a critical first step to building a life that leaves you feeling fulfilled, energised and in balance with what is important to you. The way to do this is to download my free Areas of Focus workbook, which you can get from my website. That workbook will take you through the steps to dine your areas of focus and to pull out the actionable steps you can take to keep things in balance. These will range from simple tasks such as sending an amount of money to your savings each month. A task that will likely take you less than two minutes each month. To having a date night with your partner every Friday evening. Your health and fitness area is another one that does not require a lot of time. Twenty to thirty minutes a day. Think about that for a moment. Twenty to thirty minutes a day to protect your long-time health, keep you energised and help keep your weight down. That’s a no brainer. Yet to...
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    13 m
  • Digital Overwhelm? How Getting the Basics Right Changes Everything

    Digital Overwhelm? How Getting the Basics Right Changes Everything
    May 18 2025
    How can you preserve simplicity and work at a reasonable pace in an increasingly complex and rushed environment? That’s the question I’m answering today. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The ULTIMATE PRODUCTIVITY WORKSHOP 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 | 370 Hello, and welcome to episode 370 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. Two of the challenges we face today are the increasing complexity in our work life. Yet, that has been around forever. New technology requires us to learn new techniques for doing things and, perhaps, the biggest challenge of all is dealing with the speed at which things come at us. Interestingly, the number of emails we get today is comparable to the number of letters people in the 1970s and 80s received. Yet the number of phone calls we get have dramatically dropped. That’s largely due to the move towards instant messages—which were not around in the 70s and 80s. The difference is the speed at which we are expected to respond. With a letter, there was some doubt about when the letter would arrive. It might arrive the next day, but there was always a chance it would take two or three days. And when it did arrive, we had at least twenty four hours to respond. Today, there are some people who expect you to respond to an email immediately—no thought that you may be working on something else or in a meeting with an important customer. So the question we should explore is how we can navigate the way we work today without letting people down, but at the same time work at a comfortable speed which minimises mistakes and leaves us feeling fulfilled at the end of the day. So, with that stated, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Tom. Tom asks, Hi Carl, over the years, my productivity system has changed with technology. I began, like you, with a Franklin Planner in the 1990s, then I moved to Getting Things Done and managed everything digitally. These days, I am struggling to keep up, and it just seems so complicated. Do you have any thoughts on how to keep things simple? Hi Tom, thank you for your question. One way to look at this is to remember that the basic principles of good time management and productivity will never change. Those principles are incorporated in COD—Collect, Organise and Do. No matter how complicated or fast things get, we still need a way to collect stuff and trust that what we collect will be where we want it to be when we process it. We need an organisation system that works for us. And that means, we can find what we need when we need it. And finally, we want to be maximising the time we spend doing the work, so we avoid backlogs building. It’s within this framework we can evolve our systems. Thirty years ago, we would have been collecting with pen and paper. Today, it’s likely we will collect using our phones or computer. Thirty years ago we would have had stacks of file folders and a filing cabinet or two to store those folders. Today, those files will likely be held in the cloud—Google Drive, iCloud or OneDrive, for instance. So while the tools have changed, the principles have not. I’m a big rugby fan. I’ve been following Leeds Rhinos since my grandfather took me to my first game when I was five years old. The teams that win the championships and cup games are the ones who get the basics right. In rugby, that is playing the majority of the game in the oppositions half. Being aggressive in defence and ensuring their players are disciplined—giving away silly penalties is one sure way to lose games. The teams that lose are the ones who don’t get these basics right. They try to be clever, get frustrated, and drop the ball (quite literally) and give away unnecessary penalties, which results in them giving away territory and playing the majority of the game in their own half. The message is always the same. Get the basics right and the results will come. This is the same for you, too, Tom. Get the basics right and that’s following the principles of COD. The problems will start when we begin trying to do multiple things at the same time. Multi-tasking is not a strategy. Sure there are some things you can do at the same time. Walking and thinking about solving a problem, listening to a podcast while doing the dishes or cleaning up the house. But you ...
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    14 m
  • The Intentional Day: How Top Performers Plan Their Time Differently

    The Intentional Day: How Top Performers Plan Their Time Differently
    May 11 2025
    Podcast 369 What’s the most effective time management practice you can adopt today that will transform your productivity? You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The ULTIMATE PRODUCTIVITY WORKSHOP 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 | 369 Hello, and welcome to episode 369 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. I’ve often answered questions on this podcast about the best or most effective time management or productivity system, but I don’t think I’ve answered a question about the best practices before. A practice is something you do each day. It’s just what you do. You don’t need to think about it. It’s automatic. And there is something that the most productive people I’ve come across do each day, that I find people struggling with their management of time don’t do. In many ways, becoming more productive and better at managing time is a two-fold practice. It’s the strict control of your calendar and being intentional about what you do each day. Yet to get to those practices each day, takes a change in attitude and the squashing of some pre-conceived ideas. And that is what we’ll be looking at in today’s episode. Before we get to the question, just a quick heads up. The European time zone friendly Ultimate Productivity Workshop is coming next weekend. Sunday the 18th and 25th May. If you want to finally have a time management and productivity system that works for you, and have an opportunity to work with me and a group of like-minded people, then join us next Sunday. I will put the link for further information into the show notes. Okay, let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Mark. Mark asks, Hi Carl, what do you consider to be the best daily habits for living a productive life? Hi Mark, thank you for your question. This is something that has always fascinated me about the way people work. What is it that the most productive people do that unproductive people don’t do. Surprisingly it’s not work longer hours. That’s usually the domain of unproductive people. What the most productive people do is to have a few daily rituals that are followed every day. Let’s start with the easiest one. Have a solid morning routine. It’s your morning routine that sets you up for the day. Cast your mind back to a day in your past when you overslept and had to rush out the door to get to work. How productive were you that day? Probably not very. You will have been in a reactive state all day, treating anything and everything as urgent. The “secret” is to use your morning routine to put you in a proactive state. That means looking at your calendar for your appointments for the day and identifying what you must get done that day. Then mentally mapping out when you will do your work. For instance, today I have seven hours of meetings. That does not leave me much time to write this podcast script. Yet, when I began my day, I looked at where my appointments were, saw I had an hour mid morning free and a further hour in the afternoon between 4 and 5 pm. Two hours is enough to get the bulk of this script written. Now all I have to do is resist all demands on my time today so I can get this script written. That’s the challenge. Resisting demands. Resisting demands on my time today is reasonably easy. Seven hours of meetings is about my limit anyway. So if someone requests an additional meeting, it’ll be quite easy to tell them I am fully booked today and I can offer them an alternative day and time. And that’s a mindset shift I would recommend to you. Know where your limits are and to be comfortable offering alternative days and times. If the person demanding your time insists and is in a more senior position to you (does that really happen today?), then you can decide which of your other meetings you could postpone. If your day is full of meetings, make sure you task list reflects that. What I see a lot of people doing is having a day full of meetings and a full task list. Yeah, right. That’s not going to happen. For most of us the confirmed, committed meetings will be the priority. Tasks will not be. So, on days when you have a lot of meetings, reduce your task list. That will immediately remove anxiety and give you more focus for your meetings. Next up, is to not use the excuse of a busy day to not do ...
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    14 m
  • Breaking the Backlog Cycle: Never Get Behind Again

    Breaking the Backlog Cycle: Never Get Behind Again
    May 4 2025
    Backlogs. We all have them. But, how do you clear them and then prevent them from happening again? That’s what we’re looking at today. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Getting Things Done With Linda Geerdink 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 | 367 Hello, and welcome to episode 368 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. Organising your work, creating lists of things to do, and managing your projects in your notes are all good common-sense productivity practices. However, none of these are going to be helpful if you have huge backlogs of admin, messages, and emails creating what I call a low-level anxiety buzz. You’re going to be stressed and distracted and in no place to be at your very best. What’s more, this can become a chronic problem if those backlogs are growing. This is when critical things are going to get missed. I’m often surprised to get an email from someone asking me if they can have a discount code for an early-bird discount that expired three or four weeks previously. I mean, come on. If it’s taking you three to four weeks to get to an email—even if you consider it to be a low-value email—there’s a serious problem in your system. (Or more likely, you don’t have a system at all.) So this week, I want to share with you a few ideas that can help you regain control of these backlogs and, more importantly, prevent them from happening again. So, with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Wyatt. Wyatt asks, hi Carl, how would you help someone who is backlogged beyond belief. I’ve got over 3,000 emails in my inbox, and my team are still waiting for me to finish their appraisals from last year! I feel so stuck. Please help. Hi Wyatt. Thank you for your question. Sorry to hear you feel swamped. I know it can be a horrible place to be. Before we begin, let me explain the three types of backlogs we all have to deal with. The first is the growing backlog. This one is the worst because it’s getting bigger and unless you take action immediately, it’s going to overwhelm you. These kinds of backlogs will always be your priority. The next type of backlog is the static backlog. It’s not growing, but it’s there and it’s on your mind. It needs to be dealt with, but the urgency isn’t as big as a growing backlog. And then there’s the shrinking backlog. These are the best because if they are shrinking, they’ll soon disappear altogether. Now, one of the most common areas of our work that backlogs is our email. The last statistics I saw show that on average, people are getting 90+ emails a day. If you need an average of 30 seconds to deal with each email—which I know is low—that’s around forty-five minutes to deal with them. Do you have forty-five minutes today to deal with your email? Remember, that’s a small amount of time for each email. It’s likely you’ll need more than thirty seconds for most of those mails. Now the good news. If you’re starting with a backlog of over 3,000 emails, many of those emails will no longer require a response. The moment’s passed. What I would suggest is you take any emails older than a month, and move then to a folder called “Old In-box”. While my instinct it to tell you to delete them, I’ve never come across anyone courageous enough to do it. Although, if you think about it. Deleting them gives you a perfect excuse if someone follows you up—“sorry, I don’t seem to be able to find your email. Could you resend it?” Doing this means you’ve cut your list by a large margin. What’s left can be processed. Email is a two step process. Just like we used to do with regular letters. Open your post box, take out the mail and sort it between letters you need to read or respond to and throw away or file anything you don’t need to act on. And by the way, nobody left their mail in the mail box. Why do we do that with email? With email, it’s the same process. Clear your inbox. As you clear ask yourself two questions: What is it? What do I need to do with it? If you need to read or reply to an email, then move it to a folder called “Action This Day”. If you don’t need to do anything with it, either delete or archive it. This is the processing stage. All you are doing is processing. You are not replying or reading. That comes ...
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    14 m
  • Beyond the Chaos: Building a Low-Maintenance Productivity System

    Beyond the Chaos: Building a Low-Maintenance Productivity System
    Apr 27 2025
    Where would you start if you were to completely redesign your productivity and time management system? That’s what I’m looking at this week. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Getting Things Done With Linda Geerdink 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 | 367 Hello, and welcome to episode 367 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. One of the things that can hold you back from creating a solid time management and productivity system is the legacy of your old habits and systems. It could be you have always done things a particular way, which may have worked well in the past, but no longer does. Yet, the hold of the familiar keeps you wedded to that old habit. Or, your company may have adopted a new system or piece of software that has a number of possibilities that you haven’t explored yet. And, of course, the elephant in the room where you have so many tools it’s paralysing you when it comes to deciding what to use. So, how would you go about doing an overhaul on your system so it’s simple, easy and does not require a lot of maintenance to keep working? That’s the topic of this week’s question and 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 Lindsay. Lindsay asks, hi Carl, I recently took your new Time Sector System course and I love it. The trouble I am having is I have so much stuff all over the place, I don’t know where to start to rebuild my system. Do you have any tips that may help? Hi Lindsay, thank you for your question. There’s a great YouTube video, where David Allen, author of Getting Things Done spends a day with Linda Geerdink, a Dutch journalist showing her how to get her life organised. (I’ll put the video in the show notes) It’s quite emotional at times as Linda has never had any kind of system in the past and has lived her professional and personal life by the seat of her pants. David Allen comes across as being a little cruel at times, yet, I can understand where he is coming from. Sometimes you need to be cruel to be kind in order to help someone get to where they want to be. What fascinated me about this video is the utter chaos the start of the process of building a system can be. When you gather everything you may or may not need to do into one central place, it can seem daunting. And when that involves papers, documents and digital stuff, it can feel like you are drowning in an ocean of stuff that must be done. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. So, where would I start if I was to rebuild my system? I would suggest watching that David Allen video. It starts in Dutch, but when David is introduced to the video, it continues in English. What David gets Linda to do is exactly right. Gather everything you have into a central place. Today, that’s going to be largely digital stuff. If you have notes in several notes apps, pick one and go through the process of bringing everything together into one. Which notes app you choose doesn’t really matter too much, although I would choose one that is simple to use. The more complex a notes app is, the more time you will need to maintain it in the future. (Which is not a very productive way to go about it) The good thing about notes is they are rarely urgent. Notes are support materials for meetings, projects and ideas. Most notes apps will allow you to get a URL link so you can link the important notes to tasks in your task manager. Now with you task manager, again, if you have a few of these laying around, again, pick one—a simple one, and move any tasks from the apps you discard into the one you’ve chosen’s inbox. Then process your inbox. Use the three questions: What is it? What do I need to do? When will I do it? And then move the task to the appropriate folder. Now, I know all this may take a long time. Often it can take a few days. The best way to do this is to take a day or two off and dedicate those days to getting your system sorted out. It can be fun, no really, it can be. Just be careful when you do this. We can become quite nostalgic when doing this and keep stopping to read through old notes. Now’s not the time to do this. If you do find yourself doing this create a folder called “nostalgia” and drop them in there. You can then go back to that folder when you’re finished. One tip here is to think ...
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    14 m
  • How To Be Productive And Organised.

    How To Be Productive And Organised.
    Apr 20 2025
    This week, what does it take to be organised and productive? You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin 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 | 366 Hello, and welcome to episode 366 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. One thing you will discover if you begin reading around the subject of time management and productivity is the importance of planning your week and day. Every successful person i have come across, or read about, never fails to plan their days and week. Every person who is struggling, and not achieving their goals are not. Instead, they find excuses. “I’m too tired”, “I don’t have time”, “I have more important things to do”, etc, etc. Yet, there’s more to it than that. It’s not just about having a plan for the day and being clear about what needs to be done. it’s also about protecting time for the important, but not urgent work, and knowing when to say no, when to push and when to pull back and take some rest. In essence, it’s about understanding yourself and knowing your limits. So with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice, for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Tammy. Tammy asks, hi Carl, I’m trying to understand what I need to do to become more organised and productive. I know it’s holding me back, but there’s so much conflicting advice out there that I am confused. Can you help? Hi Tammy, thank you for your question. As I just alluded to, the best place to begin is to understand yourself. This means knowing when you are at your most focused, when you are prone to distractions and how much sleep you need. The chances are, if you stop and step back, you will already know this information. Perhaps you find yourself being able to get quite a lot of work done in the morning, but struggle in the afternoons. Or, you may come alive around 3 pm and can get a lot of work done then. This knowledge, allows you to better structure your days. You can avoid meetings, where possible, at the times you are at your most focused, and rely on human connection to keep your energy levels up by holding meetings when you are less focused—there’s something about human interaction that raises our energy levels. You can also ensure you are getting enough sleep, and that means being consistent when you wake up. As I recently learned, it’s not the time you go to bed that matters, it’s waking up at roughly the same time each day as that starts your 24 hour sleep/wake cycle. If you mess around with your sleep/wake cycle, you will feel dreadful, and that destroys your productivity. Once you have the basics locked in, you can then move on to structuring your days. A couple of years ago, I wrote quite extensively about some famous authors. This was inspired by the book Daily Rituals by Mason Curry. In that book, Mason Curry wrote about incredibly productive people and how they got their work done. One person, not featured in the book, I wrote about was author Jeffrey Archer. He writes a book every year, and he has his year structured to allow him to take care of writing the new book, promoting the book he wrote the previous year and dealing with his publishers, book cover designers and much more. Archer also loves cricket. So his year is structured so he can reduce his workload in the summer when the cricket season is on. This works brilliantly. Jeffrey Archer is consistent. Everyone who works with him knows he will be in Majorca between 27th December and the beginning of March writing his next book. They also know he will be available for meetings, promotions and events between March and June. From July to October, Archer is less available, and from October he’s happy to do book tours, interviews and anything else his publisher needs him to do. It’s simple, consistent and makes working with Jeffrey Archer easy. Now, I know it’s unlikely you are a multi-million selling author. It’s likely you work in a place where there are multiple demands coming at you each day from bosses, customers and colleagues. Demands such as wanting to know how you’re getting on with this or that. If you dig a little deeper, though, most of these demands are because people don’t trust that you remember that you committed to doing something for them. What’s the most common reason you chase someone up? It’s most likely because you’re worried they’ve ...
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