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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Economics Management Management & Leadership Personal Development Personal Success
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Episodes
  • Beyond Project Thinking: How to Get Things Done

    Beyond Project Thinking: How to Get Things Done
    Mar 2 2025
    In this week’s episode, what’s the best way to manage projects? You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Ultimate Productivity Workshop 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 | 359 Hello, and welcome to episode 359 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. From time to time, something comes along that sounds great when first described but then turns nasty. In the productivity world, that something is Getting Things Done and in particular the definition of what a project is. This is not the fault of David Allen, Getting Things Done’s author; this is how his description of a project has been horribly misinterpreted. At its essence, Getting Things Done is about categorising your work into contexts. That could be work you can do on your computer or phone. In your office or at home. It is, and never was about “projects”. Projects, at best, are a sideshow. A simple way to organise your work. Nothing more. Yet for some reason, a few early readers misunderstood GTD, wrote about it and now there’s a whole generation of people believing anything that involves two steps or more is a project and must be organised as such. And there, is the source of overwhelm, time wasted to organising stuff instead of doing stuff and huge backlogs of things to do. Before we get to the heart of today’s podcast, it’s important that I clear this misunderstanding up. If you ever bought one the fantastic GTD setup guides that was, and may still be, sold on the GTD website, you will notice that whatever task manager you are using, you set up the lists, folders or projects (depending on which task manager you are using) as contexts. Those contexts usually related to people, places or things. For example, your home, or office. Your computer, printer or car. Or your partner, boss or colleagues. You then dropped any task related to these contexts into its appropriate context. Your projects were organised in a file folder system that you kept in a filing cabinet. Current projects—the things you were working on this week or month—were kept on or near your desk for quick access. In those folders you kept all the details of the project. Notes, documents, outlines, etc. Perhaps you also had a checklist of what needed to happen next. Today, you can use your digital note app for that purpose. The key thing about GTD was it was task context driven—ie, you could only do something if you were in the right place, with the right tool and with the right people. It was never about projects. So, now you have the background, I think it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Benjamin. Benjamin asks, How do you best manage projects using your task manager, notes app, and calendar together? Hi Benjamin, thank you for your question. I think the first place to start is to avoid looking for a way to treat any new input as a project. Most things are not. Theoretically, this podcast is a project. I need to choose the question, write the script, set up the studio, record the podcast, edit it, then publish it and hand it over to the my marketing manager for sharing on social media. That’s seven steps. Well within the definition of a GTD project. Yet, if I were to treat each podcast episode as a project, I’d waste hours just organising it. A podcast episode is something I do every week. It’s not a project. It’s just part of my work. Usually, on Thursday I will write the script. That means I go into my list of questions which is in a single note in Evernote, select a question, then begin writing the script. Then on Sunday morning, after my coaching calls have finished, I set up my little studio, and record the podcast. Once recorded, I edit it and then publish it. The only tasks on my task manager are a task on Thursday that reminds me I need to write my script and a task on Sunday that reminds me to record the podcast. Two tasks. That’s it. I don’t need a project folder for any of this. There is one other thing I do that relates to your question, Benjamin. I have a two hour writing block on my calendar on a Thursday for writing the script and a two hour block on Sunday for recording it. So, there in essence you have all three tools working together. I have a single note in my notes app with the title “podcast questions”. That makes it easy to search for. My task ...
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    14 mins
  • Where Are You Spending Your Time?

    Where Are You Spending Your Time?
    Feb 23 2025
    Where are you spending most of your time? Are you planning or doing? That’s what we are 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 Ultimate Productivity Workshop 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 | 358 Hello, and welcome to episode 358 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. Podcaster Chris Williamson has recently caused a bit of a stir in the productivity world with the phrase “the productivity rain dance”. Cal Newport picked this up and it’s something I’ve written and spoken about for many years. If you are obsessing about productivity tools—apps, techniques and systems—you’re not doing the work. You’re doing the productivity rain dance. It’s organising, planning and searching for new tools in the hope that somehow the work will get done. It won’t. And while you are wasting all that time planning, and playing, the work continues to pile up. This week’s question is linked to this in that it’s about tools and organising work and I hope, my answer will help you find the balance between collecting, organising and doing. Before I hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice for this week’s question, I’d like to mention that the first Ultimate Productivity Workshop of 2025 is coming. On Fridays 14th and 21st March I invite you to spend two hours with me learning how to create a time management and productivity system that’s focused on doing the work so you have time for the things you want time for. In the workshop, we will cover getting control of your calendar and task manager . Then in week two, I will show you some simple techniques to get control of, and more importantly, stay in control of your communications—email, Slack/Teams messages AND the all important daily and weekly planning sessions. Places are limited so, if you would like to develop a personal productivity system that is focused on doing rather than organising and planning, get yourself registered today. The link to register is in the show notes. Okay, back to this episode. Let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Alastair. Alastair asks, hi Carl. I recently came across your work and wonder how you avoid getting caught up in the wonderful world of productivity apps. I never seem to able to stick to anything and I know I am wasting time. Hi Alastair, thank you for sending in your question. I’m not sure you are necessarily wasting time looking for the right tools. If you are at the start of your productivity journey, finding the right tools is inevitable and yes, it can be confusing. There are so many. However, there comes a point when you need to stop and settle down with a set of tools. Those tools are: A calendar, a notes app and a task manager. The good news is the built in tools that comes with your computer will do. You don’t need expensive subscriptions to so called AI enabled tools or collaborative project management tools. What are you trying to do when you decide it’s time to get organised and be “productive”? It’s not about getting more work done. That’s a bit of a misnomer about productivity. It’s about getting the important stuff done and eliminating the less important. Getting your kids up, dressed, fed and ready for school each morning is important at 7:30 am. Checking email and messages is not. There’s a time and place for those messages, but 7:30 am is not the time. The world we live in today has made communication incredible fast and easy. Forty years ago, the only forms of communication were letters and telephone calls. (Although some offices had fax machines too). If you were not next to a telephone, no one could contact you. And if you were not in the office, you didn’t know what surprises were contained in the correspondence waiting for you. It was therefore easier to compartmentalise your days. Today, it’s much more difficult because you can be alerted to problems instantly, and those problems can derail your day very quickly. The challenge therefore is to be able to quickly sift through all the stuff coming at us and to decide what is important and what is not. When things are coming at us all day, they appear loud and urgent. But urgent is not necessarily important. If you have a thousand emails backlogged in your email system and your boss is demanding you send in your ...
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    13 mins
  • Manage Your Time, Not Tasks.

    Manage Your Time, Not Tasks.
    Feb 16 2025
    This week, why managing your time is better than managing tasks. 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 | 357 Hello, and welcome to episode 356 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. There is a scene in the movie Apollo 13 where astronaut Ken Mattingley, played by Gary Sinese, is trying to find a way to power up the Command Service Module to bring the three in danger astronauts through the earth’s atmosphere and safely back to earth. All they had to play with was 16 amps; that’s it. Sixteen amps isn’t enough to boil a kettle. And we’re talking about life support systems and navigation that was critical to bring Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise back to earth safely. In the scene, we see Ken Mattingley testing every switch in every possible combination so they do not exceed 16 amps . It’s painstaking; it takes a lot of time, but eventually, they devise a sequence that the astronauts can use to power up the command service module within the 16-amp limit. We know that Apollo 13 landed, or splashed down, safely to earth after five days. Each day, you, too, are dealing with a similar situation. You have a limited resource—time—and that’s it. You get the same 24 hours every day that everybody else gets. How you use that time is entirely up to you. The problem is you don’t have 24 hours because some critical life support measures require some of that time, including sleep. If you don’t get enough sleep, that will have a subsequent effect on your performance that day; you won’t be operating at your most productive. This is one of the reasons why it is crucial to have a plan. No flight ever takes off without a flight plan. They know precisely how much weight they are carrying. They can estimate to some degree of accuracy the weight of the passengers, and they know precisely where they’re going and what weather conditions to expect. Yet many people start their day without a plan; they turn up at work and email messages. Bosses, customers, and colleagues dictate what they do all day, and they end up exhausted, having felt they’ve done nothing important at all. And that will be very true. Well, not important to them. This week’s question is about getting control of your time. So, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Tina. Tina asks, Hi Carl, I am swamped with all the stuff I have to do at work and home. It’s never-ending and I don’t have time to do it all. Do you have any tips on getting control of everything? Hi Tina, thank you for your question. There’s an issue when we focus on everything that we have to do. We forget that ultimately, whether we can or cannot do something will come back to time. Time is the limiting factor. There are other resources—money, ability, energy, etc but if you have all those resources, and you don’t have time, it’s not going to get done. Things get even more messy when we consider that as humans we are terrible at estimating how long something will take to do. There are too many variables. For instance, as I am writing this script, my wife is messaging me and Louis, my little dog, is looking at me expectantly, hoping I will give him his evening chewy stick early. When I began writing, I thought it would take me a couple of hours, I’ve already spent an hour on it and I am nowhere near finishing it. One place to start is to allocate what you have to do by when you will do it. This helps to reduce your daily lists which in turn reduces that sense of overwhelm. I recommend starting with a simple folder structure of: This Week Next Week This Month Next Month Long-Term and on Hold. When something new comes in, ask yourself: What is it? What do I need to do and when can I do it? The questions what is it and what do I need to do will help you to classify the task. Classifying a task is helpful because it will allow you to group similar tasks together. For example, if you walk into your living room and notice the windows are looking dirty, you may decide to create a task to clean the windows. The next question is when will you do it? The best time to do this kind of task is when you do your other cleaning. Grouping similar tasks together work to prevent procrastination. When I was growing up, my grandmothers and my mother all had what they called “cleaning ...
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    12 mins

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