Your Time, Your Way

Carl Pullein
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Showing you ways to get control of your time through tested techniques that will give you more time to do the things you want to do.

  1. 10월 5일

    5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before 2026 Begins

    “I used to say, ‘I sure hope things will change, ' then I learned that the only way things are going to change for me is when I change." That’s a quote from the wonderful Jim Rohn. A strong proponent of developing a plan for your life, and a part of that is creating a strong plan for the new year.  In this special episode, I’ll walk you through the steps for the Annual Planning Season, which began on October 1st.  You can subscribe to this podcast on:  Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Join the Time And Life Mastery Programme here. Use the coupon code: codisgreat to get 50% off. 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 | 388 Hello, and welcome to episode 388 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.  A mistake I used to make was to come up with some ideas about what I would like to change in the new year in that gap between Christmas and the New Year.  The only reason I ever did that was because my friends were asking, “What are your New Year’s resolutions?” I never really had any, so I used to quickly think up some cool-sounding ideas and say that was what I was going to do.  And yet, it wasn’t always like that.  When I was a competitive athlete in my teens, each year in December, I would sit down with my coach and plan what we would achieve the following year.  What times we were going for and which races were to be the “big ones”.  I still remember the year I broke 2 minutes for the 800 metres and 4 minutes for the 1,500 metres. We knew I was close, having ended the previous year at 2 minutes 3 seconds for the 800 and 4 minutes 6 seconds for the 1,500.  All that was needed was a good, strong winter and pre-season training. I remember going into 1986 in one of the most positive frames of mind ever.  Then, when I stopped running competitively—one of my biggest regrets—I stopped planning the year. And that coincided with my not achieving very much.  I drifted from one job to another. Had no idea what I wanted to do, and I remember feeling unfulfilled and lost.  Fortunately, I rediscovered annual planning. The sitting down and thinking about what I wanted to accomplish. It was that restart that resulted in me coming to Korea, and discovering my passion—teaching.  Everything I have achieved over the last 23 years can be traced back to following my annual planning method.  From finding a career I loved, to getting married and moving to the East Coast of Korea—one of the most beautiful places in the world—and starting the company I run today, now employing four people.  All of these ideas began with the annual planning method. So, what is the annual planning method? Well, it’s five simple questions you ask yourself and give some thought to over two months—October and November.  Those five questions are: What would you like to change about yourself? What would you like to change about your lifestyle? What would you like to change about the way you work? What could you do to challenge yourself? What goals would you like to achieve?  Let me explain the kind of things you can think about. What would you like to change about yourself? This is about you. Your current habits and routines. Are these delivering the results you want?  When I sat down to write Your Time, Your Way, I knew I had to sacrifice some exercise time in order to write. I was okay with that, and I also knew a consequence of reducing my exercise time would be a gain in weight. Two years later, I had gained eight kilograms (about 17 ½ pounds)! Not good. If my weight exceeds 83 kilograms, I feel sluggish and quickly become tired.  So, in my planning last year, I made it a non-negotiable to get my weight back to my regular weight of 80 kilograms (about 176 pounds or 12 ½ stone)  Today, as I write this, my weight is 80.5 kgs. Well within my weight window.  That all started with asking myself, “What do I want to change about myself?” The answer was to get back into my regular exercise routine.  So, what would you like to change about yourself? Are you doing things that are not contributing to the results you want? Are you not consistently planning your days or weeks?  Are you not moving enough? Are you spending too much time sitting down in front of a screen and not enough time in nature?  Another one is how you dress. The pandemic saw a collapse in the way people dressed. This may not interest you, but perhaps you’d like to dress better when you go out. What could you do to improve your dress sense?  Maybe you’d like to begin journaling or meditation. Write anything you consider down. You’re not committing to anything yet; you’re brainstorming ideas. The commitments you make come in December. October and November are all about developing ideas and going deep.  The next question, “What do I want to change about my lifestyle?” Is about how you live your life every day. Is your house a mess? Do you leave your bed unmade when you get up in the morning? What about your car? Is it a garbage can on wheels?  Perhaps you’d like to come home to a clean home at the end of the day? If so, what could you do to change things? One idea that my wife and I had at the end of 2019 was to move to the East Coast of Korea. To do that, we knew we’d have to finally get a car. Living in Seoul, the capital city, with its superb public transport system, meant that having a car was not a high priority for us.  Yet, for us to get out of Seoul and live in a cleaner, quieter city, we needed to explore Korea. So, that became the plan: to buy a car and begin exploring possible places to live.  By the end of 2020, we had a car and moved to the East Coast.  That change brought some tremendously positive changes in our lives.  Yet, I know that had we not sat down to talk about our future plans, we’d still be living in a crowded, noisy, polluted city. Seoul is a great city, don’t get me wrong, but with 11 million people sharing it, you can imagine how noisy and crowded it can be.  Is there anything you’ve always wanted to do relating to your lifestyle that you’ve never considered what you need to do to make happen? Write that down.  What would you like to change about the way you work? A great question if you’ve found yourself stuck in a job or career that leaves you feeling dead inside.  Some people I know have decided to completely change their careers when answering this question, while others have started their own businesses.  It doesn’t have to be as dramatic as that, though. Perhaps you don’t like the structure you have in place to do your work. It could be a tools thing, too. Do you need to upgrade the way you manage your tasks and projects? What about your workspace? Does it need an overhaul? I’ve done that a few times. Does your current workspace feel sterile and cold? Could you change your desk or your chair?  If you work from home, can you do anything to make your workspace more stimulating? Perhaps move your desk nearer a window or change the lighting?  All these ideas can lead to some fantastic changes. However, you do need time to think things through, and that’s what October and November are for.  The fourth question is What can you do to challenge yourself? This question is there because often we get stuck in our comfort zones. We become afraid to change anything because we fear what those changes may bring. Yet, if you’re not challenging yourself, you soon find yourself trapped in stagnation. Physical challenges are a great place to start. If you feel you’ve become a little too sedentary, perhaps you could challenge yourself to do a park run in March.  Or for those of you who are more ambitious, perhaps you could challenge yourself to do a triathlon or a full marathon in 2026.  What about going back to school and getting a degree? One such challenge that comes up each year on my list is to do a master’s in contemporary British history. I’m sure it will be on my list this year, too.  Think of the things that frighten you. Is there anything you could do to overcome that fear?  The final question is What goals would you like to achieve in 2026?  There’s a reason this is the final question. That’s because after you’ve thought about the previous four questions, you’re more likely to think about how you can measure success in the changes you want to make.  One such goal my wife and I have already added is to have a big savings goal in 2026. This will affect both our spending habits—no more fountain pen purchases for me (oh no!) We haven’t settled on an amount yet, but we’re thinking about it.  Perhaps you want to set the goal of getting a promotion next year or finally starting that business you’ve been thinking about for years.  Or it could simply be a bad habit that you want to stop. Doom scrolling, the new smoking bad habit, or going to bed earlier. What about reading books? How many would you like to read in 2026?  The purpose of these questions is to get you to think. Think about what you want out of life.  You are amazing, and there’s so much you could do. Yet, you will only be able to do those incredible things if you externalise them and begin to think about how you could make them happen.  The best place to keep this list of questions is in a paper notebook. I used to do this digitally, but found I was too easily distracted

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  2. 9월 28일

    Why Your Ego Is Writing Checks Your Body Can't Cash

    “Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.” That is possibly one of Stephen Covey’s most famous quotes. It’s at the heart of almost all time management and productivity advice today. It addresses one of the biggest challenges today—the cycle of focusing on the urgent at the expense of working on the important. If you focus on the urgent, all you get is more urgent stuff. If you focus on the important, you reduce the urgent stuff.  It’s all about priorities, and 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 The Time-Based Productivity Course Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Time Sector System 5th Year Anniversary The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack  The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 387 Hello, and welcome to episode 387 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 are two natural laws of time management and productivity that, for one reason or another, are frequently forgotten, and yet they are immutable and permanent, and you or I cannot change them. They are: You can only do one thing at a time, and anything you do requires time.  When you understand this and internalise it, you can create a solid time management and productivity system based on your needs and what you consider important.  This doesn’t change at any time in your life. When we are young and dependent on our parents, these natural laws still hold true.  These laws are still then when we retire from the workforce and perhaps gain a little more agency over our time. You can take the time to landscape your garden and travel the world, yet you cannot do both simultaneously.  Even if you are fortunate enough to be able to afford to hire a landscape gardener to do the bulk of the heavy lifting for you, you will still need time to plan what you want done and find the right landscaper.  What this means is every day you have a puzzle to solve. What to do with the time you have available that day.  And the secret to getting good at solving this daily puzzle is to know what your priorities are. And that is where a little foresight and thought can help you quickly make the right decisions.  And that neatly brings us to this week’s question, which means it’s time for me now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice.  This week’s question comes from Mel. Mel asks, Hi Carl, I’ve followed you for some time now and would love to know your thoughts on prioritising your day. I have family commitments and work full-time, and I often struggle to fit everything in. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Hi Mel, Thank you for your question.  I must confess it took me many years to understand these natural laws. Like most people, I felt I could get anything done on time, that I had plenty of time to fit in more meetings, accept more demands on my time, and still have time to spend with my family and friends.  Yet, I never managed to accept more meetings and requests, meet my commitments, and spend quality time with the people I cared about.  I found myself working until 2:00 am most days and starting earlier and earlier each day to keep my promises.  And, like most people, I thought all I needed to do was to find another productivity tool. A new app would surely solve my time problems.  This was at the height of the “hustle culture” trend ten to fifteen years ago. It was all about working more and more hours. I fell into the trap of believing that to be successful, all I had to do was throw more hours at the problem.  Well, that didn’t work out. All that happened was I felt tired all day, and my productivity fell like a brick.  It felt good to work until one or two in the morning. I felt I was doing what I needed to do to be successful. Yet, I conveniently forgot I was having to take naps throughout the day, and when I was awake, I procrastinated like I was in the Olympic procrastination final.  And all those new tools I was constantly downloading, looking for the Holy Grail of productivity apps, meant I had tasks, events and information all over the place, which required a lot of wasted time trying to find where I had put the latest world-changing idea.  What I was doing was violating the laws of time.  You can only do one thing at a time, and everything you do requires time.  The lightbulb moment was realising that I had a limited amount of time each day, which meant that if I was to get the most important things done each day, I needed to know the most important things.  Here’s what’s important to you. The promises you make to other people, particularly those you make to the people closest to you.  And it doesn’t matter who you are. Anything you promise you will do for another person becomes a priority.  On a personal level, this means if you promise your daughter that you will take her to the theme park on Sunday, you don’t look for ways to get out of it because your boss asked you to finish a report and have it on her desk Monday at 8:30 am.  You take your daughter to the theme park, and you negotiate with your boss. If your boss won’t negotiate, you find a way to finish the report before Sunday, so when you do take your daughter to the theme park, you are 100% committed and present.  Meetings you have committed to are a promise. It’s a promise that you will be in a given place at a specific time. Once you have confirmed the meeting, you’re committed and, except for exceptional circumstances—illness, for example—you turn up on time.  When you treat your promises as a commitment you cannot break, you start to see that your time is limited.  It’s limited because no matter what, you get twenty-four hours a day, and that’s it.  Now, it’s a little more complicated than that. We are human beings, and an inconvenient truth about being human is that we need a certain amount of sleep each day to perform. Without enough sleep, you will discover what I discovered when I was all in on the hustle culture: Your productivity drops significantly.  You might think you are working sixteen to eighteen hours a day. Yet, your output will have dropped, and your results will only be as if you have been working eight to ten hours.  There are other factors too. A poor diet and a lack of movement will also significantly lower your performance and overall productivity.  In the end, when you think you can fit everything in and continue to say yes to every request, “Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash”, as Stinger said to Maverick in the movie Top Gun.  You will quickly find you’re making promises you cannot keep because you’re constantly tired, not in the mood and letting the people around you down.  Prioritising your day starts with you. The first thirty minutes of the day should be focused on you and the things you enjoy. That could be a freshly brewed cup of tea, ten minutes of meditation, a few light stretches, or a few moments writing your thoughts down in a journal.  I know many of you may have young kids; if they are waking up with you, could you engage in some quiet activities that involve them? Perhaps you could sit quietly together and read a real book or do some light exercise together.  Next, come your confirmed appointments. When are they, and where do you need to be? These appointments give you structure to your day. You’ve committed to them, so you are now obliged to turn up on time.  Then comes your core work—the work you are employed to do. What is that, and what does that look like at a task level? In other words, what does doing the work you were employed to do look like? Finally, from a work perspective, comes everything else. The work you volunteered for, the emails and admin and any other non-core work activities you may have said yes to.  One way to look at your day is how your grandparents would have seen their days. There’s work time and then there’s home time. When at work, your priorities are your work promises and commitments. When at home, your priorities are your family and friends.  As Jim Rohn said: "When you work, work; when you play, play. Don't play at work, and don't work at play. Make best use of your time" A simple philosophy and one that works superbly well today.  I’ve found that a simple daily planning sequence helps people to focus on the right things at the right time.  First, review your appointments for the day. This gives you a good idea of your available time for everything else. Second, look at your list of tasks for today and curate it based on how much time you have left after your meetings. It’s no good thinking you will get ten or more tasks done today if you have seven hours of meetings. That won’t happen.  Yet, on days when you have one or two meetings, you can schedule more tasks.  Finally, prioritise the list of tasks. For non-core work tasks, you can prioritise based on time sensitivity and your promises.  If you told a client or colleague you would complete the work they asked you to do by Friday, and today is Thursday, that task would be your priority. You made a promise, and your integrity is at stake. If you fail to meet the deadline, you don’t keep your promise, your client or colleague has every right to question your integrity and reliability.  One more idea you could adopt, Mel, is to think elimination, not accumulation.  It’s easier today to collect stuff than it’s eve

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  3. 9월 21일

    How to Protect Your Focus Time When Everyone Wants You Now

    I want to begin today’s episode by thanking you for listening to this podcast. Earlier this week, this podcast surpassed one million downloads.  For context, that puts this podcast in the top 3 to 5 percent of the productivity and time management niche.  So, thank you. I do this for you, and for all of you who have sent in questions for answering. You keep me on my toes and challenge me every week. For that, I am eternally grateful. Thank you. You can subscribe to this podcast on:  Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Time Sector System 5th Year Anniversary The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack  The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 386 Hello, and welcome to episode 386 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.  This week’s question is about a subject I’ve always been a little afraid of covering. I’m afraid because there is no simple answer, yet it’s certainly one that has a solution. Unfortunately, that solution isn’t an easy one to implement.  How do you manage your time and productivity in a dynamic, fast changing work environment?  The problem is that standard advice often doesn’t work. For instance, if you are in IT support and systems and company wide software are continually breaking down, how do you find the time to do focused work, when you are being interrupted by emergencies from the moment you arrive at work to the time you leave?  It does have a solution, but it involves the word “no” and the use of experience and knowledge to determine how “urgent” something really is.  I’m currently reading Dominic Sandbrook’s book, Seasons in the Sun. It’s about Britain between 1974 and 1979. Five years when the British government was in perpetual turmoil. Not just dealing with one or two crises. There were hundreds and they were happening every day.  From economic breakdown to Northern Ireland being on the verge of civil war. Every day brought a new emergency that needed instant solutions.  Reading it today makes the political turmoils we face now look like a walk on the beach by comparison. Yet the government managed, just. It wasn’t easy, but they muddled through, and economic collapse and Northern Ireland civil war did not happen. It was close, but these catastrophes were fortunately averted.  Reading about it now, it seems the UK between 1975 and 1980 was collapsing, yet as Dominic Sandbrook points out, it didn’t and most people were able to get on with their lives and improve their living standards.  If you’re working in an environment where you feel you are only one crisis away from a total shutdown, don’t despair. It can be handled, and it’s possible to implement some processes and techniques to maintain some sanity when you may feel things are about to fall apart.  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 Jan. Jan asks, Hi Carl, I work in a company with no boundaries. Anyone can send a Teams message to me anytime, and I am expected to deal with it immediately. This means I never have time to do my important work. What advice would you give to someone in my position?  Thank you, Jan for your question. One of the most dangerous things one can do is to believe there is no way through when the work piles up and there seems to be no respite.  The first place I would begin in your situation, Jan, is to look at the type of requests you are getting. Not all of them will be urgent must be done immediately.  It’s also likely when you look at them, you will find that very few are of that nature.  Back in the day, when I worked in hotel management, it could be said that no one day was ever the same. And there were a lot of unknowns happening practically every minute.  Yet, our training was build on understanding what was urgent and what was not.  A business party turning up at 8:30 am asking where their pre-booked meeting room was, when no such room had been prepared was a drop everything and get the room set up urgently. Similarly, a guest asking for a hairdryer, was also a drop everything urgency—it was likely they discovered their hairdryer was not working after they had just washed their hair. Yet most other requests were handled in the normal fashion. A change of towels, a noisy air conditioner that won’t turn off or missing bottles of water from a room’s mini-bar. All of these “urgencies” would have been unknown when the day began, but given that they happened every day, the hotel had processes in place to deal with them.  One thing we did have, which I notice many companies do not, is a clear list of priorities.  Take for example my priorities for handling email.  Anything to do with money or forgotten passwords are things I will deal with immediately I see the email. Sorting them out doesn’t take long—five minutes for most—but I understand how frustrating it can be waiting to get a response.  Everything else has a 24 hour response cycle.  It’s rare I will get either of those two emergencies—perhaps one or two a month—but when they do happen, it’s automatic for me to immediately jump into action and deal with them.  And that’s one of the first things I would recommend you do, Jan. Categorise the requests you get and put in place some rules for dealing with them.  What are genuine emergencies? What are not?  I know if you are new to your company, there will be a period where you will need to learn what’s urgent and what’s not. That’s where experience and knowledge comes into play.  Given time, you will be able to analyse the types of requests you are getting and learn the patterns. There will be some people you work with that expect immediate responses. Is that a people issue or a genuine problem issue.  Some people have become conditioned to expect an immediate response. With these people it might be prudent to slowly change their conditioning by gradually reducing your response time.  Now, of course, you may not be able to do with people in higher positions than you but for others you may be able to do so.  In Your Time, Your Way, I wrote about how emergency room medical staff use the medical triage method. Each patient is assessed against a scale or urgency.  A Level 1 needs immediate attention and their condition is life-threatening, Level 2 is urgent attention required as their is potentially a threat to life, Level 3 requires timely intervention but life is not threatened, Level 4 is less urgent, and Level 5 can wait for care. You can use this approach when you are dealing with customer care or IT issues.  Monitor the requests you get over a week or so and grade them. You may not need five levels, three or four levels would be sufficient. For example: A Level one request requires immediate attention. A Level two request requires attention within two hours A Level three request can be dealt with within the day And a Level four can be ignored.  You will need to be careful not to treat everything as a Level One. If everything was a level one, then nothing would be urgent because everything was.  One of the great things about this kind of approach is there’s no hesitation. You know exactly what to do. If something is urgent, for example, the whole company’s system goes down or there is a security breach, everything stops until the issue is resolved.  Hopefully, this kind of emergency won’t happen often. If it does, then there’s likely to be a problem in the company’s systems that need fixing and that would need to be escalated to the relevant person.  The next problem in these circumstances is that you may feel obligated to be constantly watching your email and internal messaging system. If you want to be able to get on and do your work, that’s going to be a no no.  You cannot do both. There has to be some flexibility.  What I’ve found helpful for many of my coaching clients is to protect the first thirty minutes of their work day for going through all their communication channels to see what’s happening.  This way, you can deal with any immediate problems before they destroy your day.  Then the next hour (or two if you dare), you do your focused work.  You can then check your messages and emails once you have finished your focused work. It’s only one hour.  If you’ve never done this before, I should warn you that it will be scary. You’re likely to have become used to being reactive, and changing that to being proactive by focusing on your most important work for the day for an hour or so, can be deeply uncomfortable at first.  Here you will need to be persistent. It gets easier, and your confidence grows with time.  I used to be always checking my mail for “problems”. It was horrible. It took me several weeks to become comfortable turning off all communication systems for two hours while I got on and did my most important work for the day.  But it was worth it. For one thing, I began understand that most things were not really urgent and as long as I responded within twenty-four hours people were happy.  For you, you may need to respond faster than that. But it’s unlikely that you will need to be responding immediately to everything. You’ve got to remember that no matter what work you do there is always a limited resource—time. You get twenty-four hours each day and that’s it. No more and no less. And while

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  4. 9월 14일

    Why Your Life Feels Like a Mess (And the 3 Basics That Will Fix It)

    "The real magic lies at the intersection between eating, moving, and sleeping. If you can do all three well, it will improve your daily energy and your odds of living a long, healthy life,"  That’s a quote from Tom Rath, author of Eat Move Sleep. The three most important factors in you becoming more productive, focused and motivated each day. You can subscribe to this podcast on:  Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Time Sector System 5th Year Anniversary The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack  The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 385 Hello, and welcome to episode 385 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.  Don’t skip the basics. For me, this was a hard lesson to learn. I used to stay up late to finish work or watch TV. I’d skip my exercise or allow myself to get involved in meetings I didn’t really need to attend—just to feel a part of something.  And I would eat rubbish—cereal for breakfast, sandwiches and rice or fries for lunch and pizza for dinner.  And I felt it. I was tired, unproductive, and did not know where I was going. My weight kept going up and up, and every day felt like a drudge. I would wake up, feel horrible, go to work, come home, collapse onto the sofa, turn on the TV, and escape the real world.  It was easy to blame everyone else. My boss, my colleagues, my customers, the weather, where I lived, the company, etc.  Yet, it wasn’t anyone else’s fault. It was mine.  I had allowed myself to wallow in self-pity. That was a choice.  I cannot say there was a particular moment that changed me. It was more a gradual change.  What I learned, though, was that creating an enjoyable, exciting, and fulfilling life started with getting the basics right.  And that is what this week’ question is all about. What are the basics, and why do they matter? 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 Ali. Ali asks, hi Carl, my life’s a mess. I stay up all night watching TV or YouTube videos, and then wake up late and have to rush to get to work. Then at work I feel tired and unmotivated all day. What can I do to have some better habits?  Hi Ali, thank you for your question.  The first step would be to read James Clear’s Atomic Habits. It’s a brilliant book, that explains how habits work, how to create your own and does all that in a simple step by step approach.  The next step is to understand some time tested basics. One of the many reasons why anyone would feel demotivated about the day is they are not clear on what is important to them.  Not everyone wants to be supremely fit and sporty and that’s fine. You don’t have to be. But it’s equally true no one wants to die prematurely.  As Steve Jobs said in his famous commencement address in 2006 "No one wants to die... even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there" To find your purpose, or simply the motivation to jump out of bed each morning go through the Areas of Focus workbook. It’s free and you can download it from my website.  This will give you the eight areas of life that should be in balance.  Those eight are: Family and relationships Career or business Health and fitness Finance Lifestyle and life experiences Self development Spirituality Life’s purpose Now, when I say in balance, it means defining what each one means to you. For example, for your finances area of focus could be something as simple as “I live within my means and not over spend on trivial things” or your lifestyle and life experiences could be “I live in a clean and tidy home”. Getting these eight basics of life in balance will give you some purpose each day. Living in a clean and tidy home may mean that before you leave to go to work, you make your bed and wash the dishes.  To keep your finances in check, you may decide to do a weekly or monthly budget to track how you are spending your money.  That becomes a habit. It’s a must-do.  None of these takes a lot of time, but they help to keep your areas of focus in balance.  Now onto another important factor. One of the things I’ve noticed about highly motivated and successful people is they have some structure in their lives.  They wake up at the same time each day, they follow a morning routine and have some structure for the rest of the day. That could be exercising at the same time each day or just going for a walk at the end of the day to decompress. Apple’s Tim Cook, for example, starts his day with an extremely early wake-up, around 3:45 AM, to read emails from customers and employees before heading to the gym for an hour of exercise. He eats a healthy breakfast, gets coffee, and then begins his workday. I recently wrote about Hercule Poirot, the Agatha Christie detective in many of her novels in my weekly newsletter.  Poirot was obsessive, it’s true. He was immaculately turned out at all times. Yet he had structure to his days. Breakfast was at the same time each day and he had his famous tisane (a kind of herbal drink) served in the same glass.  What draws me to Poirot is that fastidiousness. Nothing was rushed. The only things that ever bothered him was if his routines were interrupted. Perhaps not a good thing, but it did enable him to have a purpose each day. If he was taking a holiday, he refused to entertain any work. He was resting his “little grey cells” and that was the purpose of the holiday.  When he was working he was engaged completely. He actions were methodical and deliberate. I know Poirot is a fictional character, but in fictional characters there’s always a grain of truth somewhere.  Perhaps Poirot’s obsessiveness for order and structure, was motivated by someone somewhere.  The one thing I’ve learned is if you’re not getting the basics right, then everything else falls apart. The basics are your daily routines. Your sleep schedule, what and when you eat and stepping away from screens and moving.  They are not difficult to do, but without one essential ingredient, you won’t do them. That ingredient is self-discipline.  You need discipline to get out of bed on a cold, wet morning. You need discipline to say no to that plate of unhealthy food, and you need discipline to turn off the TV and go to bed at the right time.  I often shy away from advising people to develop their self-discipline because it’s hard to do. And these days I find many people have simply given up and just tell themselves they have no self-discipline and that they never have had.  They will look back in their lives to find examples and use that to prove it to themselves. Ignoring the fact that there will also have been examples of them being disciplined.  It’s complete rubbish for anyone to say they lack self-discipline. It’s innate and inside all of us. But, like a muscle, if you don’t use it, it will weaken. But never disappear entirely.  Strengthening your self-discipline isn’t particularly difficult. As Admiral McRaven said in his Texas University Commencement address—begin the day by making your bed. Is that so difficult? It’s one thing, but it’s the start of strengthening your self discipline.  Now you mentioned that you want better habits. What would you consider to be “better habits”?  That would be the place to start.  I’ve never been a good sleeper—as a consequence I fell into the trap of believing it was “just the way I was wired”. Of course, that’s not true.  In January I made a commitment to myself I would be in bed no later than midnight. It was a struggle, but I persisted. Now, nine months later, I’m in bed consistently at midnight and my sleep is better than ever.  It took a bit of self-discipline for the first week or two, but soon it was a habit.  Changing your sleep habit is straight forward. Calculate how much sleep you need, then decide what time you want to wake up, and work backwards.  So, if you discover that you need seven hours sleep and you want to wake up at 7:00 am, then you need to be in bed by 11:30 pm. (It’s not like we instantly fall asleep when we get into bed)  Another thing you mentioned, Ali, is you lack motivation at work. That may be a bigger issue. If work is demotivating you, it’s also draining you of purpose. That’s where I would spend some time analysing. When your purpose is drained, that has a big effect on your mental energy.  What is it about your work that is demotivating?  If it’s just a stage—we all go through that at times—what can you do to find some purpose. Perhaps you could set yourself a target. Sell X amount of products, solve a particularly difficult problem for your team or do something to improve your own workflows and processes. If it’s bigger than that and it’s about the job itself, then it may be time to begin looking at alternative jobs. It doesn’t mean you have to quit your current job, what it means is you begin looking at alternatives.  What kind of work would motivate you?  It’s perfectly okay to accept that you made a mistake in your choice of career. That does not mean you are stuck with that mistake. You can change careers at any time. I’ve been a hotel manager, car salesperson, a lawyer and teacher.  The hardest part for me was accepting that the legal profession was not for me. I’d spent six years in school and training, but after graduatin

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  5. 9월 7일

    How to Stay Productive When Everything Changes

    Let me take some pressure off. Your problem is not discipline. Your problem is not organization. Your problem is not that you have yet to stumble upon the perfect schedule. And your problem is not that the folks at home demand too much of your time. The problem is this: there’s not enough time to get everything done that you’re convinced—or others have convinced you—needs to get done. That’s a quote by Andy Stanley, an author and church leader and perfectly captures the topic of this week’s episode. Enjoy.  You can subscribe to this podcast on:  Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Time Sector System 5th Year Anniversary The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack  The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 384 Hello, and welcome to episode 384 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.  It’s easy to create a productivity system on paper, working with theories and concepts. The challenging part comes when that system is confronted with real-life events.  The upset customer who demands immediate action, a colleague off work sick and a boss who thinks you can drop everything and work on their latest wheeze.  It’s not that these productivity systems don’t work, they do, it’s that a system is only as good as the person adopting it is willing to slow down and consider how important the demand in front of them really is.  It’s also understanding what you have control of and what you don’t.  You don’t have control over whether your daughter’s after-school class is cancelled at short notice or not. You do have control over putting in place a contingency in case it happens.  In the real world, things change fast. An urgent email you received at 9:15 a.m. Is resolved on its own by 9:28 a.m. A meeting you spent all weekend preparing for get’s cancelled two hours before it’s due to begin. The list is endless.  Yet, having some kind of system still helps you.  And that’s what this week’s question is about. How to use a productivity system in a fast moving, chaotic world.  And so, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.  This week’s question comes from Alan. Alan asks, hi Carl, how would you advise someone that is struggling to set up a system because their work is always changing. My customers expect me to be available all the time and my boss keeps calling meetings without any notice. I never have any time to do my work.  Hi Alan. Thank you for your question.  I think it was Jim Rohn that taught me to understand that there are a lot of things in life that we cannot control. Obvious ones would be the weather, or a train breaking down that prevents you from getting into work on time.  Yet, there are also things like phone calls and urgent messages that can significantly change your plans for the day.  This is what I suppose we call life. Life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of our plans.  However, it’s always been like that. Life has always been unpredictable and yet many people have managed to deal with it.  There are a number of things you can do that will help you to stay on track, yet have the space and time to deal with the unexpected when they occur.  The first one is when planning the week, don’t focus on tasks, focus on objectives.  What I mean by this is when you focus on scheduling tasks for the week, it’s likely 60% or more will not get done. Either you don’t have the time or things change and they no longer need to be done.  Too much can change over seven days.  I’ve seen people carefully schedule out an exercise plan for the week, only to pick up a calf strain on Tuesday that prevents them from doing any more running for the rest of the week.  Yet, had they set the objective to exercise four times that week, the calf strain would be a minor inconvenience and perhaps to fulfil their exercise objective they could go swimming or to the gym and do non-leg exercises instead.  Similarly in the work environment, if you were to plan out a project’s tasks for the week, and you keep getting pulled into a last minute “urgent” meetings, the chances are by the end of the week you will have done practically none of the tasks you scheduled for yourself.  If you had instead set the objective of doing some work on the project, you would give yourself more flexibility to choose what to do given the changing circumstances of your week.  This way, although you may have only done three things on the project you still completed your objective. That’s a win.  Had you set yourself up to complete ten tasks on the project and only done three, you would consider that a failure and feel planning the week is a waste of time.  It’s as if all you are doing in a weekly planning session is scheduling tasks you won’t do. Which then makes it feel like a waste of time. But It’s not a waste of time if you are setting yourself realistic objectives based on what your calendar says you have time for.  Tasks are assigned at a daily level.  When you assign your tasks at a daily level you can take into account the changing nature of the week.  I’ve had clients have their complete week destroyed because of a crisis with a client in another country. They go into work with one expectation and by 11:00 am they are driving to the airport to catch a flight to the other side of the world to resolve a crisis.  This is why weekly and daily planning go hand in hand.  Another tip I would recommend is to avoid scheduling anything for the first thirty minutes of your work day.  Use that time to get a heads up on the day.  Go through your messages and emails to see what is happening.  I don’t subscribe to the idea that you should not check your email or messages in the morning. That to me is a ridiculous idea. When you stop yourself from processing your messages, you start to worry that there might be something in there that is important.  That worry causes distraction and it becomes difficult to focus on anything else.  The chances that there is a crisis that needs your urgent attention is slim and if there is a crisis that needs your attention better to know about it early so you have time to slow down and consider the best steps to resolve it.  But more importantly, those first thirty minutes gives you a chance to get a feel for the day, confirm your plan and decide when best to do whatever work you had decided to do that day.  To give you an example. I woke early this morning for a meeting at 8:00 am. I did my morning routines, and as I was preparing for the meeting, I got a text message informing me that the meeting had been cancelled.  That gave me back an hour I had not planned for.  So, I looked at my plan for the day and decided that the best use of that hour would be to begin writing this podcast script. Doing that would take the pressure off the rest of the day and give me a chance to bring forward other work.  All this does not mean having a system is pointless. Having a system means you can switch focus quickly and you know where to look to make better decisions on what to work on next.  For example, having a quick and simple way to collect stuff is a no-brainer. A paper notebook open on your desk with a pencil ready to go allows you to quickly jot something down when on a call or in the middle of doing something else.  Making sure that your phone and computers are set up for quick capture is also important. Ideas and requests can happen at any time. Being able to collect those ideas with the minimum of fuss is important. Then, allowing yourself ten to fifteen minutes at the end of the day for processing what you collected so you can delete the unnecessary and ensure that what is left is either scheduled or dealt with.  This is why I urge everyone to take the free COD course. COD stands for Collect, Organise and Do and it’s the foundations of every solid productivity system.  I’ll put a link in the show notes for you if you haven’t taken the course yet.  Another thing you can do, which is linked to the first thirty minutes of your day is to mentally map out when you will do something. This is where you use the power of “implementation Intentions”.  This is where you used an “if this, then that formula”  If it’s 2:00 pm then I will spend an hour clearing my actionable email. If it’s 5:30 pm, I will stop and plan tomorrow for ten minutes.  I like to use the first thirty minutes of the day to review my calendar and then visualise the different times in the day what I will be doing at that time.  It really helps to get you focused and prevents you from getting involved in things you do not need to be involved in.  Don’t be too strict with yourself. If you planned to respond to your actionable emails at 2:00 pm and it’s now 2:20 pm, it doesn’t matter. Just start going through your actionable emails. Whether you spend an hour or forty minutes on this activity isn’t the issue. What matters in you spent some time doing it.  Being consistent and allowing yourself to get back on track is what really matters. When it comes to things like emails and messages and daily admin, it’s never going to be about clearing everything in one day. It’s always about spending some time doing it daily.  If you’re just starting out on an exercise programme, it’s not really about the quality of your workout initially, It’s about spending time d

    14분

  6. 8월 31일

    The Art of Showing Up Every Single Day

    “I'm not gifted. I'm not smarter than everybody else. I'm not stronger. I just have the ability to stick to a plan and not quit.” That’s a quote from Jonny Kim. A Navy SEAL, Harvard educated medical doctor and NASA Astronaut. All of which was achieved before he was thirty five.  Now the key part to that quote is “the ability to stick to a plan and not quit” And that’s the topic of this week’s podcast. You can subscribe to this podcast on:  Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Time Sector System 5th Year Anniversary The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack  The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 383 Hello, and welcome to episode 383 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 took me many years to learn that the best things in life never happen by accident. They are the products of slow steady work. Becoming a lawyer or a doctor is not about making a decision in middle school and then miraculously ten years later you’re performing in the Supreme Court or surgery in a top hospital.  It takes years of slow steady study, experiencing ups and downs and frequently wanting to quit because it’s hard.  Yet that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s hard because as human beings we thrive when we have a goal that requires us to work hard consistently.  Jonny Kim is remarkable because he did three incredibly hard things. Yet, to achieve all of them required him to follow a simple process of study and preparation. It wasn’t impossible. All it took was a steely determination to achieve these things, being consistent and, to take control of his calendar.  And that’s what this week’ question is all about. How to do the the hard things consistently so you start to see progress.  So, let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.  This week’s question comes from Joe. Joe asks, hi Carl, the one thing I find incredibly hard to be is consistent. I’m great at setting up task managers and notes apps, but after a few days, I stop following the system. How do you stay consistent? Hi Joe, thank you for your question.  There could be two parts to this. The first is what I call the “Shiny Object Syndrome”. This is where you see every new tool on YouTube or in a newsletter as something that promises to solve all your productivity and time management problems.  We all go through this phase. In many ways, I think it’s important to do so. This way you learn the limitations of tools and find out, the hard way, that no tool will ever do the work for you.  You also discover that the more addictive the tool (I believe they call it “sticky”), the less work you will do.  For me, Notion was a classic example of that. When Notion first came onto my radar around 2018, I was fascinated. I downloaded the app and began setting it up. It was exciting. Far more editable than Evernote or Apple Notes.  There were all these cool things you could do with it. Change the font, the colours, the background, create increasingly more complex dashboards and so on.  On that first day, I spent eight hours “setting it up”. It was later that evening I realised that if I were to use Notion I would never get any work done. I’d always want to play with it and try and get it to show me what I wanted to see, when I wanted to see it. A goal I was never likely to achieve.  So, I deleted the app.  It came down to one very simple thing. Do I want tools that will help me do my work or not?  Well, the answer was I wanted tools that got me to work fast. And that was not going to be Notion.  The tools that best promote solid work are boring. They have no flamboyant features. They just do what they are meant to do. In other words they are so featureless the only thing you can do is get on and do the work.  I rather envy those people who have the time to be constantly changing their apps. I know from experience that transferring everything to a new app takes time. And then there’s the learning curve, although I suspect that’s where the dopamine hits come from.  I certainly don’t have the time to do that. I’d prefer to spend my free time with my family, walking or playing with Louis or reading books.  The other area where a lack of consistency comes in is when you have no processes for doing your regular work.  Humans work best when they follow a pattern.  If you’ve ever learned to ride a bicycle, you will remember it was difficult at first. You were wobbly, probably fell off. Yet, if you persisted, today riding a bicycle doesn’t require a thought. You jump on and off you go.  There’s an illustration that Tony Robbins talks about. When a child learns to walk it’s a painfully slow experience. There’s the crawling, the pulling itself up on a chair, the inevitable first step and the constant falling over.  Yet, no parent would ever say stop! Give up. You’ll never be able to walk.  We persist and after a few days or weeks the child is walking everywhere.  If you want to be consistent with something, there will inevitably be a period of a few weeks or months where things don’t go smoothly. Mistakes are made, plenty of falls and a lot of frustration.  That’s the initial learning curve. We all have to go through it.  Recently, I updated my iPad to the new operating system. I do this annually to get to know what’s new in preparation for updating my Apple Productivity Course.  This year, Apple has significantly changed the design of the operating system. It’s slick, fast and very different to what I am used to. Now, each morning, I clear my email inbox on my iPad. I’ve done this for years and it’s automatic. Write my journal, then grab my iPad and clear the inbox.  Over the last few days I’ve felt a little frustration. The layout of Apple Mail has changed and buttons have moved. For two days I was trying to get rid of the sidebar (a new feature). I done that now and after a week, I’m beginning to get used to the new layout.  The issue here is that those changes slowed down my processing speed. This in turn threw out my routine a little.  It reminded me why changing apps all the time destroys ones productivity. But more importantly it reminded me that consistently following processes ensures speed—which ultimately is what reduces the time required to do the work.  The problem with following routines and processes is that doing so can be boring. Yet, anything worthwhile is going to be boring at times.  But boring is good for your brain. It doesn’t have to think too much and it gives it a chance to relax.  Constant stimulation, problem solving, learning to use new apps, messing around with routines and processes that work may be exciting (dopamine hits), but they don’t get the work done.  This one of the reasons why having a regular morning routine is a great way to start the day. By following a set routine every morning from the moment you wake up, allows you to do healthy things that do not require a lot of thought.  A morning routine could be making yourself a cup of coffee, doing some stretches, brushing your teeth and taking a shower.  Or it could be a little more with meditation, journal writing or exercise. These are your morning routines, so you get to choose what you do. All that matters is that whatever you choose to be your morning routine, you consistently do it. Every morning (including weekends)  Another way to bring consistency into your life is to put some stakes in the ground. In other words, build some structure around your day based on meal times, for example.  I do the family’s laundry when I go down to cook dinner. The washing machine is in the area of the kitchen, so it seems natural to take down the laundry and do the washing while I cook dinner. Once dinner is done, the washing is finished and ready to be hung up. (I refuse to use a dryer as it destroys clothes).  With work, I try to protect 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. each day for doing the most important work of the day. It’s not always possible, sometimes I need to be in a meeting, but I will fight tooth and nail to protect that time where possible.  It took a year or so to consistently protect that time, but now, even my wife respects it. She knows not to disturb me when I am doing my focused work.  It’s just two hours a day. That still leaves me with six hours for emergencies, customer queries and team requests.  You can also do this with your communications and daily admin. If you were to protect the same time each day to respond to your actionable emails and do whatever admin is required it makes things so much easier for you. If, you were to choose 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. For your communication and admin time, and got serious about protecting that time each day, after a few weeks it would feel very strange if you were not doing it.  This is how Jonny Kim managed to do what most people would consider impossible. It wasn’t because he was smarter than anyone else. He never graduated top of his class. Instead it was down to ruthlessly protecting time to study and train.  It’s how averagely talented athletes win Olympic gold medals. They prioritise the small things. The long boring runs, the hours in the gym, or practicing their serve over and over again.  It’s boring, yes. But it gets results, every time.  And yet, if you were to look at how much time you spent on these routines, it’s tiny. Out of twe

    15분

  7. 8월 24일

    Stop Chasing Work-Life Balance - Do This Instead

    "There's no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences." That’s a quote by former GE CEO, Jack Welch. This week’s episode is about finding balance in our lives.    You can subscribe to this podcast on:  Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Time Sector System 5th Year Anniversary The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack  The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page   Script | 382 Hello, and welcome to episode 382 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 always fascinated me how so many people see the attainment of a “work-life balance” as their goal in life. Yet, that balance is easily achieved if you know what is important to you, are clear about your core work activities, and take control of your calendar.  I’m reading Dominic Sandbrook’s brilliant book State of Emergency: The Way We Were, Britain 1970 to 1974.  In Britain in the early 1970s, the economy was in dire straits. The labour unions were fighting the employers and the government, inflation was rising uncontrollably and unemployment was becoming a serious problem. Nothing the government tried worked and often made things worse.  Yet, despite all these travails, people got on with their lives. They went to work, came home had dinner with their families or dropped into the pub to meet up with friends. At weekends kids went out to the cinema, or hung out on the high street with their friends. Parents would potter around their gardens or attempt DIY projects at home.  Balance was a given. Work happened at work. Home life happened at home. There were clear boundaries.  Today, it’s easy to find people being nostalgic for those halcyon days, yet they weren’t all great. There were frequent power cuts (power outages), droughts, and the incessant strikes meant often people couldn’t get to work, or their workplace was closed because of the strikes.  Having a work life balance shouldn’t be a goal. It should be the way you life your life. There’s a time for work, and a time for your hobbies and family. Not in a strict sense, but in a flexible way.  This week’s question is about ho to achieve that with the minimal amount of effort and fuss.  So, to get into the how, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Isabelle. Isabelle asks, Hi Carl, I’m having a lot of trouble trying to balance my professional and personal life. I never seem to have time to meet my friends, and often skip going to the gym because I have to finish my work late in the evenings. What do you recommend someone do to regain some work/life balance?  Hi Isabelle. Thank you for your question. One of the most effective ways to start this is to create what I call a “perfect” week calendar. This is where you create a new blank calendar and sketch out what you would like time for each week. Begin with your personal life. How many times do you want to go to the gym, how much sleep do you want each night, and how much time you want to spend with family and friends?  Add these to your calendar. Then sketch out how you would like to divide up your work time. How many meetings per week, how much time can you spend on admin and communications each day and time for doing deeper, focused work.  Once you have done this, you will get to see if what you want time for each week is realistic. I’ve found most people who do this exercise discover that they are trying to do the impossible.  You only have 168 hours a week. And you do not have to do everything you want to do in those 168 hours.  Before coming to Korea, I used to go to watch Leeds Rhinos Rugby League team every home game. In those days, those games were usually held on a Friday night.  This meant, every other Friday, I’d make sure I left work on time, got home, changed, had a quick dinner, then went to pick up my friends and off we went.  After the game we’d call into the local pub for a few beers before going home.  During the season, we made it a non-negotiable event. It would have been unheard of for any of us to miss a Friday night game.  If I had urgent work to finish, I would rather go back into the office on Saturday morning to finish it off than miss a game.  That was the mindset. Those games and meeting up with friends were non-negotiable.  And that is the first lesson here. If there is something you want to do, then make it non-negotiable.  Of all the productivity and time management tools available, the only one that will tell you if you have time to do something is your calendar.  Task managers and notes apps can collect a lot of stuff. Ideas, things to do, future projects, meeting notes. The list is infinite. Yet, the time you have is not infinite. It’s limited. Each day has 24 hours, each week has 168 hours.  Part of the reason many feel there is no balance in their lives is they’ve allowed task managers to become their primary time management tool.  If you look at your task manager, it’s just a list of things you either have to do or would like to do. There’s no time frame. Some of the things on there will be important and time sensitive. However, a lot won’t be. And when you scroll through the list, all you see are things to do.  It numbs the mind and makes you feel you have no time to rest. The difference between today and the 1970s is what we are prioritising.  Because in the 1970s the only productivity or time management tools we had were desk or pocket diaries and notebooks, the only tool we looked at when asked to do something was our diaries.  This meant we would instantly see a conflict and would be able to say “No, sorry I cannot do that on that day”.  Today, when we are asked to do something we add to our task manager-after all, it’s easier to add it there than to open up our calendar app, and look at what we are committed to.  If you have on your calendar a regular aerobics class on a Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. And you’re asked to attend a meeting at 4:30 p.m. You’d more likely say you cannot attend that meeting if all you had is your calendar to look at.  Today, we don’t do that. We say “yes, okay” then later realise we’’ll struggle to get to our class.  I remember when I was at university, my finish time at work was 5:30 p.m. and my lectures began at 6:00 p.m. There was no way I would accept a meeting request on a Tuesday or Thursday after 3:30 p.m.  It took me twenty minutes to get to my university from the office.  Attending university was a non-negotiable for me. Meetings with colleagues could be arranged either earlier in the day or the next.  This is why you cannot afford to leave things to chance if you want to bring balance into your life. If something is important to you, you need to be intentional about it.  But there’s another important consideration and that is flexibility. Balance is about being flexible.  Most nights, I finish my coaching calls around 11:00 p.m. Now it would be very tempting for me to quit and flop down in front of the TV and mindlessly watch something. Yet, reading real books is something I get a great deal of pleasure from. So, before I consider turning on the TV, I grab my book, go through to the living room and read for twenty minutes or so.  It’s wonderfully relaxing—much more so than trying to find something to watch TV.  Yet, if there is something I do want to watch on TV, I’ll skip the book and watch the TV show.  There are sometimes when for one reason or another, I have not cleared my actionable email. If all I have is the hour after my calls finish to do it, then I’ll spend thirty minutes or so clearing as many emails as I can.  Doing my email late is far better than having to try and find additional time the next day.  On Wednesday this week, my wife asked me if I would go with her and her parents on a little trip to the mountains that afternoon.  I had not planned for it, but said if I could have the morning to record my YouTube videos and get my Learning Note out, I would love to go.  I knew I would have to edit the videos when I got back that evening, but spending time with my family was important. So, that’s what I did.  We had a lovely afternoon in the mountains and I got my videos edited.  As I sat down to read my book on Wednesday night, I had a little smile on my face because the day had been fantastic, and all my important work had been done.  Creating balance in life is not about adding more and more stuff to do in a task manager. It’s about how you are allocating your time each day.  What is important to you? That’s what goes on your calendar. There’s a time when you can sit down at your desk and do work. But there’s also time when you need to stop, relax and spend time with the people you care about, or do your exercise, play with your kids or walk your dog.  Everything you want to do requires time. Yet, time is the one thing in your life that is limited.  You can accept thousands of tasks, and have hundreds of ideas to do things but none of those will happen if you do not have the time to do them.  That’s why I advocate managing your work by when you will do it, rather than managing endless lists of tasks. When you focus more on your available time to do stuff, you begin eliminating more of the low-value stuff and begin to appreciate your time more.  The

    14분

  8. 8월 17일

    Hobby-Less and Stressed: Why We Need Real Activities Again

    "Think of yourself in a concert hall listening to the strains of the sweetest music when you suddenly remember that you forgot to lock your car. You are anxious about the car, you cannot walk out of the hall, and you cannot enjoy the music. There you have a perfect image of life as it is lived by most human beings." There, Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello reminds us to focus on the magic in front of us. What are you doing to switch off, and if you cannot do so, how can you do it? That’s why we’re looking at this week.  You can subscribe to this podcast on:  Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Time Sector System 5th Year Anniversary The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack  The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page   Script | 381 Hello, and welcome to episode 381 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.  How often do you completely switch yourself off from tasks, projects, emails and messages?  And not just professional emails and messages and tasks, it includes all the WhatsApp messages from friends, strangers and the home projects you promised yourself that you would do this weekend, but never did?  It seems we’ve found ourselves caught in the to-do trap. Where the only thing on your mind is all the things you’ve listed somewhere that you think you must do.  It’s a horrible existence. As soon as we sit down to relax, our phone reminds us there’s more to do. More emails and messages come in, task manager reminders pop up on the screen with a bing telling us we’re supposed to call this person or that one.  And given that we now carry our phones around with us everywhere we go, it’s as if the phone no longer serves us, but we serve it: jumping to its every whim and beep.  The problem here is that it’s not something you suddenly start doing. It’s a gradual creep. It begins with waiting for your daughter to text you the time her train arrives at the railway station, to suddenly worrying about whether a customer or your boss sent you last minute Teams message before the end of your work day. You’e got to check right?  And before long, you feel intensely uncomfortable if your phone isn’t in your hand or near you. It’s then when you have gone beyond experiencing a healthy relationship with your digital devices. It’s time to unravel all those now ingrained impulses.  And that’s where this week’s question comes in. And that means it’s time for me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question.  This week’s question comes from Maggie. Maggie asks, hi Carl I see all these productivity YouTube videos, and listen to a lot of podcasts, but very few of them ever talk about how to switch off at the end of the day and relax. This is something I am really struggling at the moment with.  Hi Maggie, thank you for your question.  You’re right, I rarely see videos or hear podcasts talking about switching off and relaxing. I do sometimes hear people saying to stop and relax, but not how to do it.  As I mentioned a moment a go, this is not something we just stop doing. It creeps up on you. One moment you’re a child without any digital devices, being curious, running around, trying new hobbies then falling asleep to suddenly being held hostage by task lists, projects and long lists of thing you think you should do.  Not to mention the anxiety of responding quickly enough to a friend’s text message or your boss’s email.  If you think about it, while we seem to have adapted well to this new phenomenon, and appear to just accept this as the way of life, it’s really a horrible existence.  Last week, I mentioned that I had embarked on a 13 hour autobiographical TV series on Lord Louis Mountbatten.  The series was recorded in and around 1969, so was shot before the dawn of home computers.  What I noticed was how people in those pre-home computer days relaxed. There were family board games, book reading and going out for walks and having picnics by the river.  Because the only way you could be contacted was via a letter, telegram or land line phone, once you left the house you were free. And “free” in a real sense. If you were to take a walk by the river or pond or lake, you could fully engage with your surroundings and the people you were with.  And family meals were important.  The aristocracy in the UK would dress for dinner, and even as we went into the post-war years, there would be a ritual of adults and children washing their hands before sitting down to dinner.  I rarely see that with people today. I should point out that it’s still a good practice to do—you know, washing your hands before eating your meals.  Currently, I am reading the enormous series of books by historian Dominic Sandbrook, the co host of the excellent podcast The Rest is History.  Sandbrook begins this series of books in 1950s UK and I am currently up to 1970, having just finished reading his excellent book Mad As Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of The Populist Right, a book about how US culture changed in the 1970s.  The books have chapters on how families lived and the activities they did in their spare time and as I was reading these chapters I felt a sadness that many of these activities seem to have disappeared.  For instance, in the UK, there was in almost every town and village a working mens club. Yes, today that would be considered sexist, but when these clubs started they were established for the men who worked down the mines or in the factories.  One of the clubs I used to go to would have a guest act on every Sunday night. Sometimes the act was a musician other times it might be a comedian. These clubs would be full of husbands and wives having a drink, playing bingo between the act’s sessions.  It was a wonderful evening. I remember never once worrying about work, or even talking about work. It was families talking about where they were going on holiday, playing bingo and watching the acts.  I never experienced what we called in the UK “Sunday night blues”—that depressing feeling of knowing you had to go back to work tomorrow.  I only ever experienced that when I stopped going to the club on a Sunday and instead sitting at home watching TV.  Somehow, we’ve sacrificed human activities—going out with friends and family three or four times a week—to sitting on sofas watching TV or scrolling through endless feeds in social media. Often feeling jealous of the fake lives people put on there.  And certainly not engaging with other human beings in the same room as you.  And the word “Hobby” seems to have become a quaint old-fashioned word. I mean, who’s got time for hobbies today?  And that to me is where people need to start. Have a hobby that does not involve a digital tool.  One of my rediscovered hobbies is collecting books. Real books. I’ve always enjoyed reading. It’s been a big part of my life.  I remember before I got an iPad in January 2011, I would spend weeks deciding which book to take with me on the plane when I travelled. It became an annual ritual. A week or two before I was due to fly I would spend a Saturday afternoon at the bookstore in the local shopping centre looking for something I could read while I was on holiday.  After January 2011, I no longer went to a bookstore. I downloaded books from Apple Books or Amazon. Accidentally, something I had found immensely pleasurable—spending an afternoon wandering around a bookstore, to simply hearing about a book, finding it on a digital bookstore and buying it.  The pleasure of aimlessly wandering around a bookstore was ripped away from me for the sake of convenience.  I can fully understand why the sales of vinyl records and record players have exploded in recent years. The lack of convenience and a limited record collection makes listening to music a genuine pleasure.  Those of a certain age may remember creating something called a “Mix tape”. This was where you recorded from a hi-fi system records to a tape cassette that you could play on a cassette walkman or in the car when going on a long journey.  There was was something deeply pleasurable in make those tapes. I used to do this when going on family holidays. It didn’t require a lot of brain power. Just looking through your records (and later CDs) for songs and then recording them, in real time, to a cassette.  You had to sit and listen the whole song before pressing pause on the tape and choosing the next song. Completely inconvenient by today’s standards, but that wasn’t the point. It was relaxing, enjoyable and there was a sense of pride when finished of a job well done.  And that’s where I think we should be looking for activities that help us to switch off at the end of the day or at weekends. Activities that take us away from the digital noise. For example, this year, I’ve made it a habit to spend a minimum of thirty minutes reading a real book after I finish my evening coaching calls.  I close down my office, grab the book I am currently reading, and go through to the living room, settle down on the sofa with the book and read. While I will read for at least thirty minutes, I often find myself still reading after an hour. During that time, it’s just me and little Louis lying next to me.  It’s quiet and incredibly relaxing.  Another “hobby” I began this spring was to have a bedding box on the terrace outside my office

    15분
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Showing you ways to get control of your time through tested techniques that will give you more time to do the things you want to do.

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    Carl Pullein
  • 방송 연도
    2017년 - 2025년
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    200
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    전체 연령 사용가
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    © Copyright 2024 Carl Pullein International. All rights reserved.
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    Your Time, Your Way

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