Your Time, Your Way

This week’s question is about how to balance your work life with your professional life. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 218 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 218 of the Working With 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 for this show. I’m sure you heard of Work/Life Balance and how this is the goal for living a balanced life. Well, is it? Does trying to balance your personal and work life really give you a balanced life? You see, if you place hard barriers between your personal and professional life you create an unnatural barrier to living life on your terms. If you are up against a tight deadline and you have a very important meeting the next day, what will you be thinking about as you sit on the sofa with your family in the evening? You won’t be thinking about your family. Your mind is going to be on that important meeting that begins in ten hours time. But because you have a hard rule that states after 6 PM you do not do work, you are now causing yourself a lot of unnecessary stress. The better thing for you to do is to excuse yourself for the evening, go to a quiet room and prepare for your meeting. You’ll feel a lot better, be much more in tune with your needs and you can make it up to your family the next day by taking them out for dinner somewhere nice. A lot of our time management and productivity problems come from trying to box ourselves in when if you give yourself greater freedom, you’d be a lot happier, less stressed and considerably less overwhelmed. Now before we get to this week’s question, if you would like to receive all my weekly content, including this podcast as well as my blog posts and YouTube videos in one place, then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. It’s completely free and each week you get a productivity tip plus get to see what I am reading and watching. This newsletter is a great productivity and time management resource for your weekend reading. The link to join the newsletter is in the show notes. Okay, on with the show and that means it’s time for me now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Anna. Anna asks: hi Carl, what do you think of work/life balance? I’m really struggling with this. I have two teenage boys and a full-time job. I worry that I am not able to spend enough time with my boys. Do you have any tips on having a better work/life balance? Hi Anna, thank you for your question. There is a lot written about work/life balance and it certainly used to be possible. Back in the day when we worked shifts in a factory where the only action we needed to take was to put widgets on devices, it was easy to leave work behind when we clocked out for the day. We were not coming up with solutions to problems that came up throughout the day. But for most of us, we do not work that way anymore. That kind of work has been farmed out to machines and robots. We’ve moved into an age where our physical labours are less in demand and our mental abilities have become the in-demand skill. The great thing about using our physical skills and labour is we can turn off at the end of the day. The only thing we need to worry about is where do we need to be tomorrow. Being employed for our mental skills makes it a lot harder to turn off at the end of the day. You can still be working on a client’s problems while driving home from the office. It’s much harder to turn off at the end of the day. We also live in a very connected world. I have clients who live in California and manage teams in Asia and Europe. There’s a seventeen hour time difference between Seoul and San Francisco. How do you do one on one team meetings with that time difference and maintain a work/life balance? The solution is in something called work/life integration. Rather than seeing our work and personal life are two entirely different things, we combine the two. Now, anyone who runs their own business will likely already be living a work/life integrated life. It’s a necessary part of building a business. As a business owner, you can’t simply turn off at the end of the workday. You will be constantly coming up with ideas, dealing with customers at all times of the day and having to do admin and other such tasks late into the evening. So how does work/life integration work? Well, the first step is to see your day as a whole rather split into work and home. This means if one of your boys is playing in a school rugby match on a Wednesday afternoon and he

This week’s episode is a question that came about because of my recently updated Time Sector System course. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time Sector System Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 217 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 217 of the Working With 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 for this show. So, many of you already know that my productivity system is called The Time Sector System. This system is based on managing my work by when I want to do it rather than by project. Around three or four years ago, I discovered that when I managed my tasks by project, I was spending too much time organising and reviewing and not enough time doing the work. It was leaving me with a lot of work that needed rescheduling at the end of the day. Not a good place to be when you want to feel you are becoming better at managing your time. Too much rescheduling and you lose confidence in your system. That’s when it dawned on me that, really, the most important part of any system is having the time to do the work, not how you organise your files and projects. That was my light-bulb moment. Now, I do get a lot of questions about this system. It goes against the grain of many of the more popular systems out there and naturally I get a lot of questions about it. So, I have selected one of those questions to answer this week. 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 Eric. Eric asks, Carl, You used to write and talk a lot about GTD but I notice you no longer use it. Why is that and what do you use instead? Thank you Eric for your question. Let’s start by dealing with the elephant in the room. Getting Things Done, a book by David Allen. This is the standard text by which all productivity and time management systems are judged today. There’s nothing wrong with GTD, as it is called. It’s a solid workable system. However, there are two issues with GTD that caused me problems. The first is this is a book that was first published in 2001 and its concepts are based on what David Allen taught in companies as a productivity and time management trainer in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, I remember working in the early 1990s and in those distant days it did matter where you were and what tools you had with you. If you wanted to respond to your mail, you needed to be in a place where your mail was because, for most people, there was no such thing as email. And even in the late 1990s, when email became more prevalent, you needed to be at a computer set up for your email. If you were lucky enough to have a personal email account, you needed to be at home with your “personal computer” in order to reply. For your work email, you needed to be at your office and sitting in front of your work desktop computer. So, for a simple task such as responding to your mail, you had to be in a specific physical location (home or office) and be in front of your computer (the tool). The second issue I was struggling with was how the digital task managers were created. For some reason, task managers were set up by project, not context as it should be in a GTD system. For those not familiar with GTD, in GTD your task lists are organised by context. This means you create lists based on a tool, such as a computer, a phone or car. Place, such as your office or home or person, such as your boss, spouse or colleague. The idea is you choose what to do based on where you are, with which tool or person. Now, when I went digital, I fell into the trap of believing the most effective way to manage my tasks was to organise everything by project and to use tags or labels for my contexts. Big mistake. In GTD, a project is defined as anything requiring two or more steps. This meant, theoretically, arranging for my car to go in for a service was a project or even arranging to have my haircut (I did once have hair that needed cutting). So you can imagine how many projects you end up having on your list. David Allen mentions that an average person is going to have between seventy and a hundred and fifty open projects. That’s a lot of projects for an individual like you and me to manage. Now the glue that makes GTD work is the weekly review. This is where you sit down at the end of the week to go through all your projects to make sure everything is up-to-date and current. Well, for me, by the time I switched to using the Time Sector System my weekly review was taking almost two hours to complete each week. Yes! Two hours. No, I don’t know

This week’s question is about deciding what to work on and prioritising You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 216 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 216 of the Working With 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 for this show. We’ve covered prioritising before in this podcast and it is an important part of being more productive and ensuring that what you are working on is meaningful and moves the right things forward. However, for those of you who have created a good solid system, you are likely struggling with deciding what to work on. If you are collecting a lot of inputs—tasks, events and ideas—at some point you will have to make a decision about what to do about those collected inputs and, more importantly, when you will do something about them. And those decisions can be very difficult. So, that is what we will be exploring in this week’s podcast. Don’t forget, if you want to receive all the content I produce each week in one convenient place, then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. Not only do you get a summary and link to my weekly blog post, YouTube videos and this podcast, you also get a free productivity or goal-setting lesson each week. And best of all… This newsletter is completely free. All you need do is click the link in the show notes enter your details and you’re in. Doesn’t get any simpler than that. Okay, on with the show and that means it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question: This week’s question comes from Shelly. Shelly asks: Hi Carl, thank you for all the work you produce each week, I have a question about choosing which tasks to work on. I usually begin the day with around thirty tasks in my to-do list and I never complete them all. I feel guilty about rescheduling a lot of tasks. How do you choose which tasks to work on each day? Hi Shelly, thank you for your question. This is a great question because it touches on a hidden aspect of productivity and time management. All productivity and time management systems focus on collecting and organising stuff. Writing everything down and then organising it in a way that means something to us. What often gets forgotten is finding the time to complete these tasks we collect. And, more importantly, deciding which is important and which is not. How do you do that? Well, time sensitivity is one way. Due dates and deadlines are great motivators for getting things done. If you have a deadline for something, you are going to be more likely to complete it. This becomes even more important if the deadline was given to your by your boss or someone in authority over you. Your life would be easier if you spent a little time each week doing your taxes—organising your receipts and income and expenditure—rather than leaving a year's worth until a few weeks (or days) before the tax assessment deadline. But, hey, when I don’t have to submit my tax information for ten months, why would I spend an hour every weekend pulling together everything I spent and earned this week? There’s no imminent deadline, so there’s no urgency and therefore it’s not a priority. So we leave it until a week or two before it’s due and now it’s not an hour, we are talking days if not a whole week doing work on submitting taxes. If you want to stop the tyranny of tax assessment time, then do a little each week (or month) to keep it organised. It’s not about making it a priority, it’s about making it something you do regularly. A bigger problem you will be facing each day Shelly, is a phenomenon called “over-choice”. Basically, what this means is when we are faced with a lot of options to choose from, we find it very difficult to decide. We become overwhelmed and anxious about whether we are making the right decision or not. If you were to wake up tomorrow morning and have one item to do. You would do it. No matter how big or difficult the task was. You would do it. First of all you would be focused and secondly, there’s no decision to make. You are doing that one thing. So you get on and do it. But we don’t do that do we? We see how easy it is to add things to our task managers and then, so we don’t forget something, we add a random date to a task that roughly equates to when we think it needs doing. Unfortunately, this strategy leads to tasks coming up on our daily lists that don’t actually need to be done that day but clutter up your today’s task list. When you look at that list in the morning, you have far too many decisions to make. We try a

This week’s question is about finding new goals when you have achieved many of your life’s gals already. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 215 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 215 of the Working With 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 for this show. Now, we often hear about how to achieve goals, what habits to develop and change our lives. But what do you do when you have achieved many of your long-term goals and what remains no longer inspire you? Not much is written or spoken about that. It’s as if the assumption is people struggle to achieve goals. Well, that’s not entirely true. It is hard to achieve goals, that as it should be. But it doesn’t mean we don’t achieve them. We do. So. I’m going to tackle that question this week. Now before we get to the question, if you would like to receive all my weekly published content in one single place, then subscribe to my newsletter. Not only will you get links to my content, you also get a FREE productivity tip plus notice of any special offers before anyone else. It’s free and if you want to grow your skills in productivity, time management and goal setting (and achievement) then go ahead and subscribe today. The link to sign up is in the show notes. Okay. It’s time to hand you over to the Mystery podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question is from Tim. Tim asks: Hi Carl, I have been fortunate in that I have achieved many of my life's goals. Those that I haven't achieved . . . well, they're just not attractive to me anymore. The problem is I now feel lost without having some goals. How do I find new goals? Hi Tim, thank you for the question. One thing humans need is to be continually growing. That does not necessarily mean physically grow, but grow mentally. When we stop growing, we can feel depressed and down and lost. What keeps us moving forward is something to achieve. That could be a certain lifestyle, a new knowledge or even a business. No matter what it is, our minds (and bodies) need exercising and that exercise is how we grow. When we are young, fresh from school, it’s likely we will have a lot of ideas and ambitions. We are a little naive then, and we think we are immortal and can achieve anything. Then life punches us in the face and we realise that all the things we’ve dreamed about accomplishing is not as easy to achieve as we first thought. Apparently, statically, 97% of people will stop at this point and just accept life as it is and give up their dreams and ambitions. It’s easier to blame life and our circumstances than to stand out and be different and go after our dreams—the things that other people around us say are crazy or impossible to do. The three percent who do go after their dreams and goals and accepts that their life is 100% their responsibility, are the ones who are goal driven, focused and never stop growing their skills and abilities. But there comes a natural point where most of those goals and dreams have been achieved. Then what? What do you do then? I remember, the first time I completed a marathon. It was amazing. The sense of accomplishment was incredible. There was this smile on my face. I felt I could achieve anything. Those feelings lasted all of about an hour. After that I began thinking now what? You see, achieving your goals will not give you a lifetime of fulfilment. That sense of pride and fulfilment doesn’t last. A goal, as Damon Cart talked about in this podcast a few weeks ago, is just a stepping stone to something much bigger. And I mean much much bigger. The real question to ask yourself is what do I want out of life? Who, or what do I need to become to accomplish that? Now, one place you are likely to find the answers to these questions is in your areas of focus. These are the eight areas of life that are important to us. Some are obvious such as health, family and friends and finances. But the other five are just as important. Your career or business, your spirituality, your self development, lifestyle and life’s purpose will all come into the mix at some point. I’ve recently finished reading a new biography of Ian Fleming, my writing hero. For those who don’t know, Ian Fleming was the creator and writer of the James Bond novels. Throughout the 1950s, Ian Fleming achieved everything he desired. He attained all his goals. At the start of the decade he built his dream home in Jamaica, he married the woman he loved and he published “a spy novel to end all spy novels” when he published Cas

This week, it’s all about how to stop overthinking and just get on with the work. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Working With… Weekly Newsletter The Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 214 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 214 of the Working With 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 for this show. Do you occasionally find yourself paralysed by decisions? Having too many choices and not knowing where to begin? I think a lot of us find ourselves in this situation and it can have negative effects on our overall productivity. One of the things I have conditioned myself to be able to do is to quickly decide what needs to be done and where something should go. This takes quite a lot of practice but can be speeded up with a few simple questions. Now before we get to the question, I want to give you a heads up about my weekly newsletter. If you want to receive all the content I produce each week in one convenient place, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter. This newsletter goes out every Friday and contains my YouTube videos, blog posts and podcast all in one convenient email. In addition to my content, I share with you a couple of articles of interest from other people as well as some of the videos I have been watching that week. AND, I also share with you a short essay on a productivity or time management tip that I am sure will help you to develop your out systems. The link to my weekly newsletter is in the show notes. Okay 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, I follow the Time Sector System and it has really helped me to process my inbox much faster. However, I do still find myself not being able to decide where to put a task. How do you process your inbox so fast? Thank you Alan for the question. One of the reasons I developed the Time Sector System was because I found myself wasting so much time trying to decide where a task went. When I managed my tasks by project I would have twenty to thirty open projects in my projects list and while tasks related to specific projects were quite easy to process, there were a lot of tasks that didn’t neatly fit into a project. Then I had to decide whether a new task was a project or not—based on the principle that anything requiring two or more steps was a project—if it did require two or more steps, I created another project to add to my already overwhelming project list. It was crazy! I found myself spending so much time deciding what something was and precious little time doing whatever that something was. And don’t get me started on the time it took to review so many projects each week. That’s how the Time Sector System was born. It came about because of frustration and when I analysed what was important about a task, I realised the only important factor was when I was going to do it, not what project it was associated with. Basically, I removed a step—a step that was taking up a lot of time each day and week. Now the only decision I need make when I get a new task is when am I going to do it. There are no more grey areas because I’m not thinking about how many steps are required. All I am deciding is when I am going to do it. My thoughts and ideas about a project are kept in my notes app. If I want to add information, ideas or a checklist of things to do on a project, I can jot them down in the project note and not worry about dates, labels or anything else you need to think about when you manage projects from a to-do list. Many of the old style task management systems require you to make a lot of decisions, and as we now know, our ability to make decisions each day is limited. As the day goes on, our capacity to make good quality decisions diminishes. And, as most people are processing inboxes at the end of the day, it’s at that time when our ability to make decisions is at its lowest. This is why we struggle in this area. We get caught up in overthinking a simple decision: What to do next. So what about those decisions I alluded to earlier? Well when you are processing your inbox—whether that is your task manager’s or email inbox, the first question to ask yourself is: What is it? If you are processing your email, there are many different types of email. There’s spam that got through your spam filter—of course you delete these immediately. Then there are those emails you were CC’d on, but you have no action to take personally and there are emails that do require you to take some action. I’ve found this one question can eliminat