Your Time, Your Way

Carl Pullein

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Your Time, Your Way

Answering all your questions about productivity and self-development.

4 DAYS AGO

The Only Time Management Strategy That Works

What one thing could you do this month that would transform your productivity? That’s what I’m answering this week. 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 Subscribe to my Substack Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 351 Hello, and welcome to episode 351 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 one of the strange quirks of human nature to overcomplicate things. This is particularly so when things start to go wrong. In my favourite sport, rugby league—as in most team-based ball sports—the basics of winning a game are possession of the ball and territory. If you can consistently complete your sets in your opponent’s half of the field, you will likely win the game. Drop the ball or give away silly penalties by overcomplicating moves, and you’ll make it very difficult to win the game. Teams that lack confidence are particularly guilty of these mistakes. Watch any winning team, and you will see they stick to the basics and never panic when they go a try or goal behind. You can see this in any workplace, too. Those people who rarely appear stressed or overwhelmed stick to the basics. They have processes for getting their core work done—the work they are employed to do. Top salespeople dedicate time daily to prospecting and following up with their customers. CEOs ensure they have time for meeting with their leadership team weekly so they are aware of what’s going on and know where the potential issues are. So, what can you do to ensure you stick to the basics each day to avoid those pernicious backlogs? Well, before I answer that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from George. George asks, hi Carl, are there any strategies you know of that guarantees someone will always be on top of their work? Hi George, thank you for your question. I’ve always found it fascinating to look at occupations where mistakes can lead to a loss of life—airline pilots and surgeons, for example. Before any flight, a pilot goes through a checklist to ensure the plane is in working order. They check the weather and the weight of the cargo—both of which can affect how the aircraft will fly. They calculate the speed they need to reach before taking off and plot their flight path to avoid storms or dangerous weather fronts. No pilot would ever consider not doing these checks. Indeed, not doing them would be an act of gross negligence and could potentially be career-ending. Similarly, surgeons follow a checklist. They check the patient’s name, the type of surgery being carried out, and, if necessary, which side they will be operating on. They also check the patient’s blood pressure and other measurements. Again, failure to do so would be considered gross negligence, and a doctor could be fired for not doing them. Now, perhaps lives do not depend on you doing your job correctly, but approaching your work in the same way a pilot or surgeon does can ensure that your work gets done without missing essential tasks. The first step is to identify your core work. The work you are employed to do at a micro-level. For example, if you manage a team of people, what do you need to do at a task level to manage your team? That could be to prepare for and hold a weekly team meeting. It may involve setting aside time each month for a thirty-minute one-to-one session with each team member. That would translate into weekly tasks for preparing for the team meeting and scheduli

13 min
22/12/2024

Getting Ready for 2025

This week, I've delved into my archive to bring you an episode first published on the 1st of January this year. This will help you prepare yourself for an outstanding 2025. ----more---- You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The CP Learning Centre Membership Programme The Working With… Weekly Newsletter 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 Script | 305 Welcome to episode 305 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, 2024 is here. A New Year with a lot of potential new opportunities and plans. The challenge you will face (because we all face this challenge) is executing on all the ideas and plans you have for this year without a loss of enthusiasm or energy. And that will happen because no matter how well you have planned the year, things will not work out as you imagine. Some things will go exactly how you expect them to, but most will not. And that’s the same for everyone. If you deliver all your plans and projects exactly as conceived, you are not ambitious enough to move forward. You’re making things too easy. So how do you avoid the loss of enthusiasm and energy that you will need to see you through the year? Well, that’s the topic of this week’s question, so let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for the question. This week’s question comes from Carrie. Carrie asks, hi Carl, every year I get excited about all the things I want to do, and when it gets to February or March, I lose all my enthusiasm because I haven’t done anything I had planned to do. Do you have any advice on avoiding this? Hi Carrie, thank you for your question and Happy New Year to you too. One thing I can tell you straight up is you are not alone. It turns out 92% of those who set New Year goals or resolutions have given up by 16th February. Only 8% manage to achieve some of their goals. This means we need to learn what those eight percent do that is different from the 92%. The first thing I discovered about the 8% is they have no more than three goals for the year. And those three are very specific. For example, they may have a financial, a physical and perhaps a career goal. And that’s it. If we use these as an example, the financial goal is possibly the easiest. Imagine your financial goal is to save $5,000 this year. You can break that down into twelve months and send $417.00 per month to your savings account. On the 31st of December, you will have a little over $5,000 in it. On a task level, this is a 30-second task once a month where you send the $417.00 to your account. Now, if your finances are tight, you may have to review what you are spending money on and make some changes to what you spend, but the action to take is just thirty seconds per month. Physical goals can be a little more complex. Not everyone does exercise to lose weight. Some just want to improve their overall health; others would like to challenge themselves physically by running a marathon or climbing a big mountain. However, whatever the purpose or “what” the goal is, physical goals mean you need to find time for regular exercise. The essence of the goal is to find the time and do the exercise, and that will almost certainly achieve your goal. The difficulty with these types of goals is the starting point. If you have not exercised for a number of years and are not in great shape, it is going to be hard. This is like pulling a large truck. The hardest part of pulling a truck is the start. When the rope you are attached to takes the strain to get the truck moving, it takes an inordinate amount of strength. However, once th

14 min
15/12/2024

How To Work With Your Strengths.

This week, why it’s important to know what kind of person you are. 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 Subscribe to my Substack Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 350 Hello, and welcome to episode 350 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. WOW! 350 episodes. I never thought this podcast would still be going strong after six years. Thank you to all of you for following me and this podcast and to everyone who has sent in questions. Please keep them coming in—they are the fuel of this podcast. So, back to this episode. One way to destroy your efforts to become better organised and more productive is to fight against yourself. This can manifest itself when you are a deadline-driven person trying to be a carefully planned out person. Let me give you an example: if you struggle to find the motivation to begin a project because the deadline is six months away, yet you pressure yourself to start now. You’ll likely find yourself losing interest and giving up after a few weeks. Then you beat yourself up. But, perhaps you’re not doing anything wrong; you’re just trying to do something you are not wired to do. That’s why it’s important to know what kind of person you are and to figure and what works and what doesn’t. Okay, before we go further, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Matthew. Matthew asks, Hi Carl, What do you recommend to someone who finds it difficult to get motivated unless there the deadline is right on top of them? Ho Matthew. Thank you for your question. I’ve witnessed something like this very close to home. My wife struggles to start work on a project or a task until the deadline is right in front of her. She then pulls out all the stops pulling all nighters if necessary. Yet, she always meets her deadlines. In the twenty + years I’ve known her, I cannot recall a time she missed a deadline. Ever. My mother, on the other-hand is the complete opposite. She will begin getting her holiday items together sever months before she travels. I know, when we travel to visit my family over the Christmas holidays, he will be wanting to plan her next trip to Korea with me. Six months before she’s likely to travel. She even gets her suitcase ready. It would be fruitless to encourage my wife to be more like my mother or vice versa. My mother hates stress—it gives her a headache. My wife doesn’t see the point in over preparing. Yet, we shouldn’t be looking at the methods, instead look at the results. Neither my wife nor my mother miss deadlines. They have different approaches, but still achieve the same results. Some of my coaching clients wake up very early 4:30 - 5:30 am and like to plan their day before they finish their morning routines end. Others find it more beneficial to plan the day the evening before. Yet, as long as you begin your day with a clear idea of what needs to be accomplished that day, does it really matter when you do your daily planning? I recommend if you are an early bird, do your planning in the morning. If you are more of a night owl, do it the evening before. What matters is you plan the day. The benefits of having a clear idea of what you want to get accomplished that day, far outweighs the timing of your planning. I have clients who see Ali Abdaal’s productivity recommendations and wonder how he gets any work done with so many tools being used to organise something as simple as what to do

13 min
08/12/2024

How To Plan The Week in 45 Minutes or Less

This week, the question is on how to reduce the time it takes to complete a solid weekly planning session. 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 Subscribe to my Substack Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 349 Hello, and welcome to episode 349 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 issue that frequently comes up in my YouTube video comments and email messages is the subject of weekly planning and it taking too long. It’s taken me a while to see how this might be happening, but a recent coaching call pointed me in the right direction. The issue is the difference between what David Allen calls the Weekly Review and planning a week. The Getting Things Done Weekly Review is, about looking backwards. You spend a lot of time looking at what you have done on individual projects. Given that in GTD, anything requiring two or more steps is a project and that by following that definition, you are going to have between, and I quote from the Getting Things Done book, thirty and hundred and fifty projects at any one time, is it any wonder weekly reviews take so long. This is why I do not call my planning session a weekly review. Instead, I am planning the week, not reviewing my work. The word “review”, at least to me, suggests looking at something that happened in the past. Yet, planning is about looking ahead. What’s happened has happened. What matters is what you do in the following seven days, and that will be contingent on appointments and commitments you have in those seven days. So, without further ado, let me turn you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Greg. Greg asks, hi Carl, I’m struggling with doing my weekly plan. I’ve taken your advice to do it on a Saturday morning, but it still takes me almost two hours. Are there any secrets to getting it down to less than an hour? Hi Greg, thank you for your question. The question I would start with is, “Are you planning the week or looking back at the week just gone? If you are following the Time Sector System, one routine task I recommend is to give yourself ten minutes before you close out the day to process your task manager’s inbox. Processing your inbox is about asking three questions: What is it? What do I need to do? When will I do it? The second question, What do I need to do? May give you the answer, nothing. In that case, you can delete the task altogether. When you do a task, will depend on its urgency. It may be something that doesn’t need to be done this week, in which case you can move it directly to your next week, this month or next month folder. If it does need to be done this week, when will you do it this week? You then add the date. Doing this routine task everyday, means when you sit down to do your weekly planning on Saturday morning, you only need look at your next week and this month folders and move anything to your This Week folder if you must or want to do it in the next seven days. In my experience, that only takes ten minutes. Now what about all those projects? Well, if you are still trying to manage you projects in a task manager, good luck. Weekly planning is going to take a long time. You will have to go through each project and make sure nothing has been missed. That’s going to take a long time if you have between thirty and 150 projects. However, if you manage your projects in your notes app, then these won’t need reviewing. Every time you touch a project you

14 min
01/12/2024

Yes, You Can Design A Perfect Week.

This week, I’m going to show you how to design your “perfect” day. 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 Subscribe to my Substack Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 348 Hello, and welcome to episode 348 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. What would a perfect day look like for you? I’m not talking about drinking sangria in a park, feeding animals in the zoo, and later, a movie. I’m talking about how a typical day would go. What time would you like to wake up? What would you enjoy doing for the first hour of your day? What would you like to do in the evenings? And what time would you like to go to bed? These questions are all part of what I call designing your perfect week. It’s an exercise that helps you to bring some structure into your day. Once implemented, this reduces the number of decisions you need to make each day and makes planning less demanding and a lot faster. Not taking control of your calendar means others will take control of it. If not your boss or customers, it’ll be your family and friends. This leaves you being pushed and pulled all over the place. When you wake up in the morning, you have no idea what will happen or where you will end up. More dangerously, you will have no idea whether you can get your work done, and inevitably, you’ll find yourself with huge backlogs and a lot of accumulated stress. Not a great place to be if you want to be better organised and more productive. So, let me show you how you can regain control of your calendar and start putting what you want first. This means it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Megan. Megan asks, hi Carl, I’ve tried designing a “perfect” week but found I don’t have enough time to do everything I need to do. Do you have any tips to fit everything in? Hi Megan, thank you for your question. That you have discovered you don’t have enough time for everything you want to do is part of why I recommend people do the Perfect Week calendar exercise. The purpose is to help you see what you do and don’t have time for. But first, how do you set up the Perfect Week calendar? First, open up your calendar—it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Google, Outlook or Apple Calendar. What you are going to do is create a new calendar and call it “Perfect Week”. I recommend you do this on a larger screen. It is possible to do it on a phone, but you won’t see the bigger picture of the week. A laptop or tablet works better when you do this. Now, begin with your personal life. How much sleep do you want? What time will you go to bed? Block those times in first. For instance, if, in your perfect world, you go to bed at 11:00 pm and want seven hours of sleep, then you would block 11:00 pm to 6:30 am. (Allow yourself thirty minutes to fall asleep). Now, how long do you want for your morning routine? Perhaps you want the first hour of your day dedicated to you. To exercise, read, plan, meditate and/or write a journal. All you need to do in your perfect week calendar is block the time you want for these activities on your calendar. Call it your Morning routine time. (The details of what you do in that time can be added as a checklist in your notes later.) Next look at the evening. What would you like to do? Be careful here; you may wish to block time out for family and friends. When you do this, you are involving other people, and they will have a different agenda to you. You c

11 min
24/11/2024

Don't Copy. Find Your Own Style.

This week, why you should not be copying other people’s systems. 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 Subscribe to my Substack Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 347 Hello, and welcome to episode 347 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. There is a lot of advice on managing your to-dos, organising your notes and controlling your calendar. And it can be tempting to copy whatever you have seen, believing if it worked for someone else, it must work for you. Well, not so fast. One thing I’ve learned from coaching hundreds of people is that no individual is the same. We think differently, have different jobs, and have different family lives and interests. One example is Tiago Forte’s PARA method. It’s a great way to organise your notes, and many people swear by it. However, it never worked for me. I’m a goal-orientated person. Goals motivate me. I also define Areas of Focus differently from how Tiago defines an area. This is why I settled on GAPRA (Goals, Areas of Focus, Projects, Resources and Archive.) This does not mean that PARA does not work. It works, for some people. Similarly, I have coaching clients who find GAPRA works better. It all depends on how you think, like to organise things and do your work. So, what can you do with so much conflicting advice? How can you find the methods for you? Well, before I get to that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Frank. Frank asks, hi Carl. I’ve been a life-long follower of productivity systems and have struggled to find a system that works for me. How would you advise someone to find a way that works for them? Hi Frank, thank you for your question. Around 20 years ago, I began my career as an English teacher in Korea. I had come from working a typical 9 til 5 office job and suddenly I was on the other side of the world, working from 6:30 am to 12:00 pm and 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm. It was tough. I’m not a natural morning person—never have been—so waking up at 5:00 am was a shock to my system. It wasn’t long before I began taking naps. I would get home at 12:30, and go straight back to bed for two hours. For the next ten years, that’s what I continued to do. I had learned about the power of taking naps from none other than Winston Churchill. He believed that if you took a solid 90 minute nap every afternoon you would be able to get at least a day and half’s worth of work done in a day. He wasn’t wrong. By taking an afternoon nap I found I was full of energy when teaching in the evening and was able to spend an hour preparing for my next day’s classes when I got home in the evening. Yet, I knew Churchill took his naps between 3:30 pm and 5:00 pm. That didn’t work for me. So I adapted it to work better for me. Likewise, back in 2016 or so, I read Robin Sharma’s brilliant 5 AM Club book. I was sold. I thought, okay, let’s give this a try. For those of you not familiar with the 5 AM Club, this is where you wake up at 5:00 AM and do twenty minutes of exercise, then 20 minutes planning and finally 20 minutes of learning. It’s solid way to begin your day. Yet, I had a problem. I’ve never been comfortable exercising in the morning. So, I adapted it. I did twenty minutes journal writing, then ten minutes planning the day and finally studied Korean for thirty minutes. And it worked. I was consistent for around eighteen months and I loved it. But then I hit a problem. My coaching bus

13 min
17/11/2024

Deep Dive With Dr Kourosh Dini

This week, I have a special episode for you. A second interview with Dr Kourosh Dini. In this episode, we talk about rationalisation and how to change our approach to many of the false beliefs that come from it. We also discussed pens and paper and a little more about managing ADHD. Here's how you can learn more about Dr Dini's work. Newsletter:https://wavesoffocus.com/Your-First-Step-to-Breaking-Free-from-Force-Based%20Work/Waves of Focushttps://wavesoffocus.com/on SMART goalshttps://www.kouroshdini.com/lay-off-the-goals-a-bit-would-you/

1h 3m
10/11/2024

How To Find Time.

Is it possible to expand time? Literally, no. But there is a way to find more time if you’re willing to use these techniques. 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 Subscribe to my Substack Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 345 Hello, and welcome to episode 345 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. Common phrases you will hear are “I don’t have time” or “I wish I had more time”, and yet you already have all the time you need. The problem is not time, the problem is often the amount of things we want to do in the time we have. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, life was simple. Find food and water, make babies and stay safe. Neglecting either of those three things would result in some serious issues—the biggest of which would be death. Given that human evolution is slow, we are not best suited to deal with hundreds of emails and messages, requests from bosses, finding child care, commuting to and from work and all the other modern-day accessories we’ve chosen to add to our lives. We cannot expand time, yet if we are unwilling to reduce what we want to do, we will feel overwhelmed and that more modern ailment, the fear of missing out, or FOMO. However, there are a few techniques you can use that will give you enough time for the things you want to do if you are willing to try them. But before I get to how, allow me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Giles. Giles asks, Hi Carl, I’ve done your “perfect week” exercise and realise that my problem is I want to do too much. There isn’t enough time in the day. Do you have any tips on fitting in hobbies and still get enough sleep? Hi Giles, thank you for your question. The good thing is you’ve discovered that no matter what you want to do or feel you must do, you will always be limited by the amount of time available. And, now that you’ve done the Perfect Week calendar exercise, you can see what you have left after taking care of your work and family obligations. One of the first realisations about finding time was when I learned of Ian Fleming’s writing routine. Ian Fleming wrote a new book each year from 1952 to his death in 1964. He never missed a year, even in the year he had his first heart attack in 1961. In the early years, Fleming worked For The Sunday Times as their foreign editor, yet he negotiated a two-month vacation each January and February. During those two months, he would fly off to his Jamaican home, Goldeneye and almost from the first day, would begin writing the next book from 9:30 to 12:30. After lunch, he would nap, and then the day’s socialising would begin. Around 4 pm, he would go back to his writing desk for an hour to review what he had written that morning, and that would be it. Four hours a day for six weeks. That produced the first draft of his next book. For the rest of the year, he worked his regular job in London. Dealt with any rewrites and began marketing the book that was being published that year. If you were to analyse how Ian Fleming managed his time, he wasn’t looking at the day-to-day. He looked at the year as a whole. He knew he needed six weeks to write a new novel each year, so he made sure those six weeks were blocked out in his diary before the new year began. That’s just six weeks out of fifty-two. This is similar to blocking time out for your core work. If you know you need ten hours a week to do your core work, hoping you will f

12 min

Answering all your questions about productivity and self-development.

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