Episodes

  • The Best Way to Get Consistent With Your Morning Routine

    The Best Way to Get Consistent With Your Morning Routine
    Dec 21 2025
    "The first ritual you do during the day is the highest leveraged ritual, by far, because it has the effect of setting the mind and setting the context for the rest of your day." — Naval Ravikant or was it Eben Pagan? I don’t know, but it’s a great quote to begin today’s episode. 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 | 398 Hello, and welcome to episode 398 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. Your morning routine is one of the best ways to create a productive day. If you were to wake up at the very last moment, rush around your home getting ready while trying to sip your hot coffee, and rush out the door to catch the train to work, you’ve started the day in a stressed state, and you’re likely to stay stressed all day. It’s not a great way to begin the day. If you were to start the day with a set of routines that you follow every day, two things would happen. The first is that you have no decisions to make, which preserves your decision-making powers—powers that diminish throughout the day. And the second is that the routine itself allows you to slow down. However, as with all things good for us, we can take it to extremes, which can create stress in itself. I remember in 2017, I began doing Robin Sharma’s 5 AM Club. This is where you wake up at 5:00 AM, do twenty minutes of sweaty exercise, twenty minutes of planning, and twenty minutes of learning. It’s a great routine, but unfortunately for me, in 2018, I began coaching, which meant I was doing calls late at night, significantly reducing the sleep I was getting. I found myself walking around all day like a zombie. I decided to stop doing the 5 AM Club routine and develop my own, which I’ve stuck with for seven years now, and I still love my mornings. And with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Teagan. Teagan asks, In my morning routine, I take care of my pets, check my home budgeting app, then have breakfast and coffee while doing my email sort. My daily planning is done the night before. The problem is that I don't want to transition to getting dressed and starting work after doing this routine. It takes me 3 hours or more to get going. I'd like to do some physical activity, but this would make the morning even longer. Do you have any tips on moving more efficiently through the morning? Hi Teagan, thank you for your question. I think the simple answer would be to include getting dressed as part of your morning routine. However, before you get there, I think there may be an issue in your routine. Three hours is too long for a morning routine. Let me explain. Imagine you had a flight to catch at 7:00 AM. It takes you 90 minutes to get to the airport, and you need to allow 2 hours for check-in and getting to your gate. That would mean you need to leave your house at 3:30 AM. If your morning routine takes three hours, you would need to start your day at 12:30 AM. Therefore, dangerously reducing your sleep time. Most people think of doing their morning routines when everything is normal. Unfortunately, “normal” is not a consistent state of affairs for most of us. It may happen 90% of the time, but when we develop our morning routines, we need to consider the 10% of days when it doesn’t and how we will start the day on those days. The “perfect” morning routine is a routine you do 100% of the time. This would be your starting point. I’ve found that a morning routine of around 45 minutes is realistic. This means that even on days when you need to start your day earlier than usual, there are few excuses you can use not to do your routine. Although hopefully you won’t need “excuses” for not doing it. Your morning routine should be something you look forward to doing. It gives you a reason to jump out of bed, not crawl out. It should be built around things you enjoy doing. To give you an example, my morning routine is: Wake up and put the kettle on.Drink a glass of lemon juice water while the kettle is boiling.Make a pot of Yorkshire Tea.Wash my face and brush my teeth.Then, sit down at my desk, with my mug of tea, open my journal and begin writing. Finally, open my email and clear my inbox. In total, that takes me about 40 to 50 minutes. It depends on how much I write in my journal....
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    13 mins
  • Overcoming Project Freeze: How to Start When You Feel Stuck

    Overcoming Project Freeze: How to Start When You Feel Stuck
    Dec 14 2025
    "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." That was President John Kennedy in 1961, speaking at the Joint Session of Congress. It is possibly the best example of a project statement ever made. 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 | 397 Hello, and welcome to episode 397 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. Starting projects. It can be tough. Where do you start? Where will you find the time? And what do you need to do? These are just some of the questions you will find yourself asking. Yet the biggest obstacle to completing a project on time is overthinking and over-planning. Thinking about and planning a project are not the same as working on one. Working on a project is doing something that moves it forward. Decorating your bedroom will require paint and brushes. The only pre-project decision you need to make is what colour. The first two steps, therefore, are: Decide what colour to paint the bedroomBuy paint and brushes I would add a third decision: when. When will you do it? Once you’ve done those three things, you’re ready to go—no more planning, no more thinking. Just get on and start. Yet, that’s not how most projects go, is it? There’s thinking, planning, then creating tasks in your task manager, and if it’s a work project, a meeting, then perhaps another meeting. Often, by the time a project is conceived, 80% of the time required to complete it gets spent on thinking, planning, and meetings. And that brings us nicely to this week’s question—a question about finding ways to reduce the thinking and planning time. So, let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Phil. Phil asks, “Hi Carl, how do you work on complex projects?” I find I spend a lot of time planning a project, end up with a long list of things to do, and when it comes to starting, I freeze. It’s as if I don’t know where to start. Do you have any tips on handling this type of problem? Hi Phil, thank you for your question. “Project freeze” is a common problem for many people. I suspect this stems from the belief that every aspect of a project needs to be planned before starting. Yet, for many projects, this would be impossible. Imagine you were part of NASA in May 1961, and you’d just heard President Kennedy’s speech at the joint session of Congress about why the US should put a man on the moon and bring him back safely to earth before the end of the decade. At that time, NASA was struggling to get even the smallest of rockets into space—the idea of sending astronauts to the moon and back was a pipe dream. Yet a group of incredible people at NASA in 1961 took on the challenge. Instead of planning every single step they thought would be needed to complete the project, they looked at what they already knew, the obstacles they would need to overcome, and the first steps. That gave birth to the Mercury space mission. The Mercury programme was not to put a man on the moon; its objectives were to orbit a crewed spacecraft around Earth, study the human ability to function in space, and ensure the safe recovery of both the astronaut and the spacecraft. Before they could reach the moon, they needed to understand how humans cope in space. So the project’s objective was to send a man into Earth’s orbit. The key was to get started, and they did this by listing out the obstacles they needed to overcome first. They then worked out how to remove those obstacles. Now, I know our projects are unlikely to be as big as sending someone to the moon and back, but we can adopt the same approach that NASA used to work on our projects. Even small projects can adopt this approach. Let’s say you were asked to do a presentation on the likely effects of AI on your company’s business over the next five years. Where would you start? For something like this, there would be several phases. The first would be to research and gather information. For this, the task would likely be to find out who to ask or what to read. Okay, when will you do this? Here’s the key point. It’s no good just deciding what needs to be done first. You need to make it intentional, and to do that, you will need ...
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    15 mins
  • The Chaos Trap: How to Reclaim Control in a Busy Environment

    The Chaos Trap: How to Reclaim Control in a Busy Environment
    Dec 7 2025
    "In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention." — Pico Iyer How do you feel when you have nothing to do but enjoy your surroundings? Where nothing is urgent, and you can enjoy the moment you are in? Never felt it? Maybe that’s a problem you need to fix. Today’s world makes us feel that everything must be done now, yet it doesn’t. If you were to slow down, step back from time to time to think, you’d get a lot more important things done and eliminate much of what is unnecessary. 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 | 396 Hello, and welcome to episode 396 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. Slow down. There, I’ve said it. If there were one distinguishing characteristic of those who control how they spend their time and when, it would be that they are slow. Not in a negative way, more in an intentional way. They meet their deadlines, are never late for appointments and have clearly had time to read through the meeting preparation notes. Even in one of the most stressful occupations, that of being a special forces soldier, they are trained to slow down. The US Navy SEALs have the expression “slow is smooth. Smooth is fast”, and I know from talking with former members of the UK Special Forces that a large part of their training is focused on slowing down and being deliberate with their actions. Of course, the problem here is that when you’re faced with twelve urgent Teams messages, you have five missed calls from an important customer, and your next appointment is about to start, the last thing your instincts will tell you to do is to slow down. Yet it is precisely in those situations that slowing down and being intentional about what you do next is what you do. Slowing down calms your over-anxious mind, and when your mind is calm, you make better, more rational decisions. And slowing down is what this week’s question is all about. So, to kick us off, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Hanna. Hanna asks, Hi Carl, I work in a very busy Pharmaceutical company, and from the moment I step through the door at work, it feels like chaos. My phone never seems to stop ringing, and my Teams feed looks like it’s alive. It’s always moving! The day’s a blur. What can I do to slow things down and regain some control? Hi Hanna. Thank you for your question. One of the things I’ve learned is that we do have control over the speed of the day. I know often it feels like we don’t, but we do. The reason is that we always have choices, even when it often feels like we don’t. You can choose to answer your phone or let it run to voicemail. You can choose to answer those urgent Teams messages immediately or not, and you can choose to go to the staff rest area and make yourself a nice cup of tea. Unfortunately, it’s natural for us to head straight into the storm of those phone calls and messages. And when we do that, we start conditioning ourselves to do it consistently. Yet maybe the best thing you can do is pause, make that cup of tea, and strategically plan your approach. This is often what I call the tactical retreat. Step back, pause, and look at what’s currently on your plate and your most important tasks for the day. However, you will only be able to do that if you can move from being a firefighter to becoming a fire prevention officer. Firefighters charge straight into every issue with only one intention: putting the fire out. Fire prevention officers: pause, look at the bigger picture, and seek ways to prevent the fires from starting in the first place. In all companies, you need both types of people. You’re not going to prevent every crisis or urgent issue. Yet many can be prevented. I gave one example in last week’s episode. If you have ten equally urgent messages to reply to, you’re going to have to choose which one to respond to first. If you don’t have a process or a strategy for handling that situation, you will panic. Panicking slows you down because the act of panicking creates a lot of activity, yet nothing happens to deal with the messages. The strategy I suggested was to use the first-in-first-out approach. Deal with the oldest...
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    15 mins
  • Is Time Management Actually a Waste of Time?

    Is Time Management Actually a Waste of Time?
    Nov 30 2025
    "The mind is like water. When it's turbulent, it's hard to see. When it's calm, everything becomes clear." — Kobe Bryant Kobe Bryant was definitely onto something when he spoke those words. If you’re not in control of your commitments and have no idea what needs to be done next, you’re going to be stressed. And stress, like turbulent water, makes it hard to see where you should be spending your time. 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 | 395 Hello, and welcome to episode 395 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. What’s the point of learning how to be more productive and to be better at managing our time? Are we not just shuffling work around—work that will need to be done at some point anyway? Well, yes and no. Historically, people went to work, often in factories, where they performed repetitive manual labour. When their workday finished, they “downed tools”, clocked out and went home. As there were no TVs or smartphones, people often played cards or board games with their families, read books or went to the pub. It was easy to leave work at work. It was easy to manage our time. There was personal time and work time, and the two did not mix. Today, it’s very different. Most of you listening to this podcast will likely be working in what is commonly called “knowledge work’ jobs. You’re not hired for your muscles. You’re hired for your brain. And this causes us a problem. Manual labour meant you did a hard day’s work, and when you went home, you could forget about work. In knowledge work, it’s not so easy to stop your brain from thinking about a work problem. I remember when I worked in a law firm, I caught the bus home and often spent most of the journey thinking about an issue with a client and trying to figure out the simplest way to solve the problem. In the past, people would have looked forward to getting home to their families. When you’re mentally distracted in that way, it’s hard for you to switch off and enjoy that time with your family and friends. Today, it also means there’s no barrier—except our own willpower—to sending an email or a Teams message at any time of the day or night. In the past, the factory gates were locked, or someone else was doing your job on the night shift. It wasn’t possible to work beyond your regular working hours. Time management was much easier. Not so today. And that nicely leads us to this week’s question. And that means it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice. This week’s question comes from Michael. Michael asks, Hi Carl, I’ve spent years struggling with time management, and it’s got to the point where I think there’s no point. As hard as I try, there’s always something that needs to be done, and I never get a chance to finish anything and end up with everything being urgent. Is there any point to all this time management and productivity stuff? Hi Michael, thank you for your question. In many respects, you might be right that managing time, or at least trying to, is a waste of time. (I think there might be a pun there) As I alluded to, with knowledge work and the explosion of communication tools over the last few years, things that could have waited a day or two now seem to have to be dealt with immediately. It’s not that the task is suddenly urgent; it’s a combination of people’s expectations and the delivery system. The problem here is that no matter how fast the delivery system becomes—or other people’s expectations— we are human. We can still only do one thing at a time. That is not going to change in our lifetime. And that’s where to start—understanding that you, as an individual, can only work on one thing at a time. In other words, if you have ten equally urgent messages to reply to, you’re going to have to choose which one to respond to first. Now, you could come up with a complex, convoluted system for deciding which message to respond to first, or you could adopt a more straightforward first-in-first-out approach. Start with the oldest and work your way through your list of messages. What are we talking about here—perhaps a ten-minute delay for you to get to a particular message? Does ten minutes really matter? You’re not trying to save someone’s life in an emergency room, are you? Messages are often more ...
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    16 mins
  • Stop Drifting: Turn Your 2026 Ideas Into Reality

    Stop Drifting: Turn Your 2026 Ideas Into Reality
    Nov 23 2025
    Back in October, I gave you the five questions to ask yourself before 2026. In this special follow-up episode, I share with you what you can do with the list you have been building over the last two months. 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 | 394 Hello, and welcome to episode 394 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. Hopefully, you’ve started creating a list of things you want to change and or do in 2026. If not, it’s not too late. If you missed that episode, the five questions are: What would you like to change about yourself? This question is focused on you, your habits—good and bad. What would you like to change about your lifestyle? This is about how you live, the material things, if you like, such as your home, car and other possessions that improve your lifestyle. What would you like to change about the way you work? The professional question. Perhaps you want to learn more about AI, or change jobs and work from home, or maybe go back to working in an office. What can you do to challenge yourself? What could you do that frightens you slightly? This question is designed to help you move out of your comfort zone. What goals could you set for next year? Realistically, what could you accomplish next year that has alluded you? The idea behind this exercise is to give you time to think a little deeper and discover where you are happy and where you feel things need to change. Now, one thing you will find helpful is to go back to your Areas of Focus. There, you have your definitions of what family and relationships, health and fitness, career, lifestyle, self-development and others mean to you. Often, you will find that by reviewing these eight areas, you will find something you have neglected over the previous twelve months. As I’ve been helping my coaching clients with this exercise, it’s surprising how many of them have discovered neglected areas. This is quite natural, given that once the year begins, we can easily get caught up in the day-to-day crises. Then we drift away from our good intentions. In a perfect world, you would give yourself two months to reflect on these questions. To explore options and talk with your family. But don’t worry if you have not started yet. There’s still time to develop your thoughts and ideas. Now, some people have asked me where best to capture these ideas. Over the last two years, I’ve written these questions out in the back of my planning book. This book is always on or near my desk, and I have captured a lot more ideas this way than I ever did digitally. So, my advice to you is: if you have not started this exercise, grab yourself a notebook, write the five questions as headings, and over the next few weeks, allow yourself to think about them and write down your ideas. Right now, it’s less about what you write out and more about just getting everything written. And there’s a very good reason for this. If you do this exercise over a few weeks, what you will discover is that a theme will develop. Let me explain. Last year, I failed at getting back to fitness. During 2023, I reduced my exercise time to focus on writing Your Time Your Way. I also wasn’t very careful about what I ate, and as a consequence, my weight ballooned. Last year was supposed to be the year I got back into shape, and I failed miserably. So, last year, as I went through these questions and captured ideas, I soon found that health and fitness were common themes. This meant when I began 2025, my focus was to get back into shape and not repeat the mistakes I made in 2024. And it worked. I went from touching 88 kilograms (around 195 pounds) in January to where I wanted it to be—80 kilograms (around 176 pounds) by the middle of July. To do that, I needed to change a few habits. Moving more and locking in a consistent exercise time were the obvious ones, but I also looked at my diet and removed all processed foods, replacing them with natural foods—real vegetables, fruit, and fresh meat. Given that around Christmas and the end of the year are quiet times for me, I reviewed my calendar and moved a few things around to accommodate my new routine. Another example, I remember two years ago, a client of mine was struggling to grow her side business. It was causing her a lot of frustration. One idea she wrote down was to work harder on her ...
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    13 mins
  • Why "Disciplined People" Don't Feel Disciplined

    Why "Disciplined People" Don't Feel Disciplined
    Nov 16 2025
    “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going." That’s a quote from one of my favourite people, and a friend of this podcast, Jim Rohn. Listening to one of his lectures—for that is what they were—in 2017 changed my life, and I hope this episode will change yours. Let’s get started. 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 | 393 Hello, and welcome to episode 393 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. Discipline is unsustainable. You probably have discovered that. Yet there are many people we look at and see someone living what many would describe as a disciplined life. So how do they do it? Well, I can promise you it’s not discipline. Discipline is like a rocket used when launching a spacecraft—it’s required initially to get the spacecraft off the ground, but once in orbit, the rocket can be discarded. Then the balance between forward velocity and the Earth’s gravitational pull maintains the spacecraft in orbit. And that’s how these outwardly “disciplined” people do it. They decide what it is they want to accomplish—healthy eating, regular exercise, journal writing, daily and weekly planning, etc. And then they “launch”. A lot of effort and focus is required initially, but after a few weeks, their forward velocity—or the habit—takes over and it becomes something they just do. And you can do the same. And this week’s question is about how to go from an idea to turning that idea into something you will “just do”. 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 Anna. Anna asks, Hi Carl, for the last three or four years, I have done your Annual Planning exercise. And each year, I fail to accomplish the things I set out to do. I feel I don’t have the discipline to keep my commitments. There’s always something else that gets in the way. How do you help people start to live a more disciplined life? Hi Anna, thank you for your question. As I alluded to a moment ago, it’s not really about discipline. That’s a fuel that will run out eventually. Sure, it can get you started, but if you don’t develop the habit or routine over a few weeks, the consistency you want will slip away, and you’re back at square one. The problem with discipline—and, for that matter, motivation—is that they rely on the human condition. For discipline, you need willpower. Willpower diminishes throughout the day. You start with strong willpower, and as the day goes on, that power slowly wears down. But it is also dependent on how much sleep you got, whether you are in a good or bad mood, whether you are stressed or anxious, and the people around you. You may have heard the advice to ditch your “toxic friends”. They are the ones who keep pulling you down to their level. If someone were attempting to give up smoking, the advice given is to stay away from their smoking friends. If you surround yourself with people who hate exercise and you decide, for example, you want to take up the “from couch to 5K” programme, you’re not going to find a lot of support from the people you surround yourself with. They have become what is known as “toxic friends”. Instead of thinking you need discipline to achieve the things you want to achieve, look at what you can do to make achieving your goals easier. Imagine you decided you wanted to read more books. Many people will set the goal to read a certain number of pages or chapters each day. This method requires immense discipline to maintain consistency. You see, people often set these goals when they are rested, unstressed, and motivated. What you need to think about is what a realistic target would be if you were tired, unmotivated, and just wanted to curl up and scroll through your phone. A better approach would be to set a time target. For example, one of my clients wanted to finish reading the pile of books in his home office this year. He had around thirty-five books he’d bought, and they were real books, not ebooks. I suggested to him that he set a target of reading for 20 minutes every evening before going to bed. This, he felt, was realistic on days he was tired out. Speaking to him last week, he said he had discovered that on most days he read for well over 45 minutes, and on some days he ...
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    14 mins
  • When Everything Falls Apart: How to Recover Your Productivity System

    When Everything Falls Apart: How to Recover Your Productivity System
    Nov 9 2025
    “When I was Leader of the Opposition in the UK and some time out from an election which we were expected to win, I visited President Clinton at the White House. As we began our set of meetings, he said: “Remind me to tell you something really important before you leave.” I was greatly taken with this and assumed I was about to have some huge secret of state imparted to me. As I was leaving, I reminded him. He looked at me very solemnly and said, “Whoever runs your schedule is the most important person in your world as a Leader. You need time to think, time to study and time to get the things done you came to leadership to do. Lose control of the schedule and you will fail.” I confess I was a little underwhelmed at the time. But he was right.” That’s an extract from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s book. On Leadership: Lessons for the 21st Century. And it’s perfect for the theme of this week’s episode—finding time to do the important things. 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 | 392 Hello, and welcome to episode 392 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 nice when our systems work. We follow our plans for the day and the week, and when we arrive at the end of the week and look back, 80% or more of what we set out to accomplish is crossed off. Unfortunately, those weeks are rare—even for the most productive of people. There are far too many unknowns that will pop up each day and week for us to consistently get what we plan to do, when we plan to do it, done. But that doesn’t mean that productivity systems are a waste of time. They are not. A solid productivity system keeps you focused on what’s important to you and gives you a way to prioritise what matters most. And it doesn’t matter where you are in life. You might be nearing retirement and in the early stages of preparing your business for sale, or you could be starting out on a university graduate programme. There will always be things to do, some important, some less so. The key is to remain consistent with your system so you know each week, you are nudging the right things forward, even if you’re not getting everything done. And that leads me to this week’s question, AND… The Mystery Podcast Voice is back! So, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Serena. Serena asks, Hi Carl, I have implemented productivity systems to keep me on track with my academics as a graduate student, and they have worked well when I consistently followed the steps. The problem is that when I get stressed out, I fall behind on deadlines. When the weekends come, I just want to decompress and do nothing. What can I do to get back on track with the system and continue to practice good personal productivity practices? Hi Serena, thank you for your question. When I was at university, we had four core subjects each semester. It was on these that we would be expected to write essays and be examined on at the end of the academic year. This is nice because from an organisational standpoint, class times will be predefined for you. They would go onto your calendar. These become your weekly commitments. And while you may not know the deadlines for the essays at the start of the semester, you will know roughly when they will be due. That would be the same with your exams; you may not know the precise date of the exams at the start of the academic year, but you will know roughly when they will be held. This is often the same for many of you in the workplace. You may know which quarter a project deadline falls in, but you may not know exactly which date the deadline will be. One thing you do know, though, is that there is a deadline. Now, whatever we are working on we all have four limitations to deal with. Time itself, there’s only 168 hours each week. The fact that you can only work on one thing at a time, our emotions—sometimes we’re just not “in the mood” —and, as humans, we get tired and need to take a break. There’s nothing we can do about these four limitations. You can “optimise” the human things though, ensuring you get sufficient sleep being the obvious one, and becoming as stoical as you can be in any given emotional situation (a lot easier said than done) Given that one of the “fixed” ...
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    14 mins
  • What Matters Most: How to Find—and Defend—Your Priorities

    What Matters Most: How to Find—and Defend—Your Priorities
    Nov 2 2025
    "Prioritise what matters. You can't be everywhere, do everything, and have everything!" That’s a quote from Oprah Winfrey, and it captures the essence of this week’s question. 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 | 391 Hello, and welcome to episode 391 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 arrive at your desk, open up your Teams messages or email, and your screen fills with line after line of unread (and read) messages. One message grabs your attention, it’s from your boss and you feel compelled to open it. And from that one action, your whole day is destroyed. And while I am sure that message from your boss was important and potentially urgent, but did it really warrant destroying your day? That scenario is happening every day to millions of people, and it makes deciding what your priorities are for the day practically impossible. So, what can you do to ensure you are acting on your priorities and not being distracted by what appears to be both urgent and important? Giving some reflection, putting aside that so-called urgent message might actually be the best thing you can do. So, with that said, let me read out this week’s question (The Mystery Podcast Voice is on holiday this week). This week’s question comes from Michael. Michael asks, hi Carl, I really struggle to decide what I should be working on each day. My work is very dynamic; a lot can be thrown at me each day, and whenever I plan my week or day, none of it ever gets done. What’s the best way to prioritise? Hi Michael, thank you for your question. In many ways, what you describe is what I see as the curse of the modern world. The incredible advances in technology have enabled us to do seemingly impossible things, yet they have also sped everything up. I remember just twenty-three years ago when I worked in a Law office in the UK, and if we received a letter (remember them?) from another lawyer, we effectively had around twenty-four hours to compose our response—even if what was being asked was urgent. We relied on the postal service, and no matter how fast we responded to that letter, it would not leave our office until 4:00 pm at the earliest on that day. And if we missed the 4:00 pm deadline, tough. It would have to wait until 4:00 pm the next day—which incidentally gave us a wonderful excuse for anything arriving late. The expectations from the “other side”, as we called them, were that they would receive the reply two days later. Today, just twenty-three years later, those two days seem to have fallen to just two minutes. What went wrong? The problem is that no matter how well planned our days and weeks may be, owing to others’ expectations, we are “expected” to respond within hours, sometimes minutes, not days. This has blurred the line between what we know is important and what is simply urgent noise. This is why it’s more critical today to be absolutely clear about what is important to you. And I emphasise the words “to you”. What’s important to you is not necessarily important to another person. When someone requires you to do something for them urgently, it’s urgent to them, not necessarily to you. You may have twenty similar urgent requests waiting for you. You are expected to decide what is the most urgent. That’s an almost impossible decision to make—if you don’t know what’s important to you. So, the important place to start, Michael, is to establish your areas of focus. These are the things that are important to you, and they are based on eight areas: Family and relationships Health and fitness Finances Career and business Lifestyle and life experiences Self development Spirituality And your life’s purpose. The first step is to define what each one means to you and then pull out what action steps you need to take to keep everything in balance. These are the higher-level priorities in your life. There’s a little more to it than that, and if you want to learn more about developing your areas of focus, you can download my free Areas of Focus Workbook from my website; the link is in the show notes. Next, what is your core work? This is the work you are employed to do. Now, most people can describe their jobs. For example, I’m an architect, ...
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    13 mins