Your Time, Your Way

By: Carl Pullein
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  • Summary

  • 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.
    Copyright 2024 Carl Pullein International. All rights reserved.
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Management Economics Personal Success
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Episodes
  • The Importance of Keeping Things Organised

    The Importance of Keeping Things Organised
    Sep 29 2024
    One of the biggest drains on your time (and productivity) is a disorganized workspace. This week, I’m sharing some ideas for getting organised so you can find what you need when you need it. 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 | 340 Hello, and welcome to episode 340 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. I remember watching videos by David Allen—author of Getting Things Done—where he explains the importance of having an organised workspace. These videos were recorded before the digital takeover, yet the principles remain the same whether we deal with paper or digital documents. If your stuff is all over the place, you will waste a lot of time trying to find what you need, and it’s surprising how much time you lose. This week’s question caught my attention, as getting and keeping your workspace organised is an overlooked part of the modern productivity movement. It won’t matter how clever your digital tools are if you don’t know where everything is or how to organise your notes so you can find what you need when you need it in seconds. You’ll still waste much time doing stuff you shouldn’t need to do. As I researched this, I could only find advice on keeping desks and physical files, notes, and documents organised. There is little advice on keeping a digital workspace clean and organised. Well, that is apart from some older articles about how an untidy computer desktop slows down your computer and makes finding anything slow and cumbersome. Now before I go further, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Alice. Alice asks, Hi Carl, How do you keep all your files, notes and other digital things organised? I’m really struggling here and would love some advice. Hi Alice, thank you for your question. One of the first things you will need to do is allocate a single place for your digital documents. Today, most people are comfortable storing all their personal files in a cloud storage system, such as Google Docs, Microsoft OneDrive, or Apple’s iCloud. If you are concerned about security, an external hard drive also works. Now, just as before the 2000s, you will likely have two places: one for work and one for your personal stuff. Your company will probably dictate your work storage system. The important thing about storing documents and files you may need is accessibility—i.e., how fast you can access the files. In the past, if we wanted a file for a client named Rogers, we would go to the filing cabinet, locate the letter R, and find the file for Rogers there. If it wasn’t there, one of our colleagues probably had it. (And how frustrating was that) Today, all you need to do is open iCloud, One Drive or Google Drive and type in the name of the client you are looking for. You will then be presented with a list of all the documents related to that client. And perhaps you may already be seeing a problem. In the past, everything was kept together in a single file folder; today, client notes can be found everywhere. We have CRM systems (Customer Relationship Management software) that track communications with customers and clients. However, these are only as good as those who enter the data. We receive phone calls, emails, perhaps text messages, and all the documentation generated by orders, invoices, and quotes. If the people entering the data are not timely and perfect, time can be wasted just looking for all that stuff. Those CRM systems may track documents related to that client, which makes things a little easier. But do you trust them? So, how can you keep your workspace organised and in order? First, choose your tools. Your calendar and email will likely already be selected for you in your professional environment. Fortunately, you should have freedom over your task manager and notes app. Rule number one. Use only one. By this, I mean one task manager, one notes app and one calendar. Now, it is okay to use a separate calendar for your work events; after all, you may only be able to access your work calendar through selected devices. I would always advise you to try to connect your work calendar to your personal one where possible. By this, I mean that if you use a Google or Apple calendar for your personal life, you can subscribe to your work calendar. Not all companies allow this, but I’...
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    13 mins
  • How To Prioritize Your Work (And Estimate Task Time)

    How To Prioritize Your Work (And Estimate Task Time)
    Sep 22 2024
    Podcast 339 How do you prioritise your tasks and estimate how long something will take to do? That’s what 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 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 | 339 Hello, and welcome to episode 339 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, I have two common questions to answer: The first is how do I prioritise when everything’s urgent, and the second is how do you know how long a task will take? Your areas of focus and core work determine one, and the other is impossible. Before I answer the question, I’d like to let you know that I am now on Substack. There will be a link in the show notes for you to subscribe. I have a crazy plan to write on Substack every week and, over a year, complete a book. The book will tackle the time management and productivity problems we face today and use subscriber comments and questions to enhance the book. If it’s any good at the end of the year, I will publish the book. So, please help and become a subscriber. You can become part of something very special. Okay, on with the episode. Let me deal with the impossible issue first. How do you determine how long a task will take? The problem here is you are human and not a machine. This means you are affected by how much sleep you got last night, your mood, and whether you are excited by the task or not. You will also be affected by things like jet lag, whether a close family member is sick or if you had a fight with your spouse or partner that morning. This is why I don’t recommend task-based productivity systems. They are not sustainable. Sure, some days you can do all your tasks and have oodles of energy left in the evening. On most days, you’ll struggle to do two or three of them. I usually write my blog posts on a Monday morning. I’ve been doing this for eight years. I write roughly the same length each time—around a thousand words. Yet, some days, I can write the first draft in forty-five minutes; others, it takes me ninety minutes to write 750 words. I cannot predict what type of day I will have. Yet, what I do know is that if I sit down and start, I’m going to get something done. And that’s good enough. This means I know I have two hours to write, and something will get done as long as I write in those two hours. I want to finish everything, but if I can’t, as long as I’ve got something written when I return to finish later, it will be much easier than if I had not started. However, that said, sometimes time constraints can help. If you know you have a deadline on Friday, and you also know you still have a lot to do, putting yourself under a bit of pressure to get moving on the project can help tap into your energy reserves. The trouble is that this is not sustainable or productive in the long run. Doing that means you will neglect other parts of your work. Emails will pile up, your admin will become backlogged, and you will neglect other things you should be doing, meaning you will need to tap into those reserves repeatedly. And that becomes a vicious circle. What works is to allocate time for your important work each day. Instead of focusing on how much you have to do, you focus on your available time. Imagine you are in sales, and you have follow-ups to do each day. If, on average, you need an hour to do your follow-up, that would be the time you protect each day for doing your follow-ups. Some days, you will complete them in less than an hour; others, you won’t. But it doesn’t matter. As long as you do your follow-ups daily, you will always be on top or thereabouts each week. And let’s be honest: When dealing with phone calls, nobody knows how long they will take. It’s just not something you can predict. Now, on to the question of prioritising your day. This comes back to knowing what is important to you and your core work—the work you are paid to do (not the work you volunteer to do). All the classic books on time management start with you thinking about what you want before you dive headfirst into sorting out the mountain of work you think you must do. You see if you do not know what is important to you, everything that seems remotely urgent will be important to you. And that is not true at all. It could be argued that not knowing what is important is just plain laziness. You’re delegating an essential aspect of your life to ...
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    13 mins
  • How To Use The Eisenhower Matrix to Prioritise Your Life.

    How To Use The Eisenhower Matrix to Prioritise Your Life.
    Sep 15 2024
    What is the Eisenhower Matrix and how can you use it to help you focus on the important things in life. 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 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 | 338 Hello, and welcome to episode 338 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. You may have heard of the Eisenhower Matrix, or as Stephen Covey called it in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the Productivity Matrix. It’s a matrix of four squares divided up between Important and urgent (called quadrant 1), Important and not urgent (quadrant 2), urgent and not important (quadrant 3) and not urgent and not important (quadrant 4). It’s one of those methods that gets a lot of attention after a book has been launched. Yet, this matrix was first introduced to us by President Eisenhower in the 1950s after President Eisenhower mentioned in an interview that "I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent. This “quote” was first spoken by Dr J Roscoe Miller, president of the North Western University at that time. So, it’s questionable if Eisenhower ever applied this method to his work, but whether he did or he didn’t, it is an excellent framework to help you prioritise your work and help you to get focused on your important work and aspects of your life. This week’s question is all about this matrix and how you can apply it to your life so you are not neglecting the important, but not urgent things that so many of us neglect because they are not screaming at us and because they need an element of discipline which so many people find difficult today. So, without further ado, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Michele. Michele asks, hi Carl, I recently read your book and saw that you wrote about the Eisenhower Matrix. I’ve always been fascinated by this matrix but have never been able to use it in my daily life. How do you use it to get things done? Hi Michele, thank you for your question. This matrix is one of those things that once you’ve learned and begin to apply it to your daily life, you soon forget you are using it. Let me explain. Much of what comes our way is “urgent”, or it is to the person asking us to do something. That could be your boss, a client, your spouse or partner or your kids. Whatever they want, they want it now, and only you can give it to them. Then, there are quite a few things that are important but not urgent. These include taking care of your health, planning your week and day, sitting down for a family meal at least once a day, and self-development—whether that is through reading books, going to night school, or taking courses. These are often neglected because the urgent and important drown them out. Ironically, if you consistently take care of the important and not urgent things, you will spend less time dealing with the urgent and important. Yet, most people cannot get to these quadrant 2 tasks because the quadrant 1 tasks are swamping them. It becomes a vicious circle. The bottom part of the matrix—the not important things—is what you want to avoid. these are the urgent and not important and the not important and not urgent things. (What’s called quadrants 3 and 4). The urgent and not important things (quadrant 3) are the deceptive things. These are unimportant emails dressed up to look important. Most emails and messages will come under this quadrant. One of the things I’ve noticed when I begin working with a new client is the kind of tasks they have in their digital task manager. 80% of the tasks there are not important tasks. It’s these tasks that are drowning out the quadrant 1 and 2 tasks (the important ones). I am starting an experiment to see if using a paper Franklin Planner for three months can still be done in 2024. One thing I’ve already noticed is because I have to write out the tasks I need to or want to do today, I am much more aware of the kind of tasks I am writing. My daily task list is much shorter than when I do this digitally. As a consequence, tasks that are not important (urgent or otherwise) rarely get onto my list. This paper-based task list has reversed the type of tasks on my list—now, 80% are important. So, what kind of tasks fall into these different categories? Let’s begin with the easiest one: Quadrant 4. These are the tasks...
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    13 mins

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