Podcasts about your time

"A million dollars a shot is my price. But I only take one a year. The rest of the time I maintain my skills." That was Francisco Scaramanga, the villain in The Man With the Golden Gun, played by the superb Christopher Lee. Who, interestingly, was a cousin of James Bond creator Ian Fleming and a regular golfing partner of his. Now, while I certainly wouldn't recommend following Scaramanga's career path, there's a valuable lesson in that line. The reason Scaramanga could ask such a high price was not because he worked all the time. It was because he spent most of his time practising, refining, and maintaining his skills so that when the moment came, he could perform at an exceptional level. And that brings us to this week's question, which is all about developing, and more importantly, maintaining, your skills at managing your work and your time.   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   The COD Productivity Method  Learn more about the Quiet Productivity Method here   Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 |421 Hello, and welcome to episode 421 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's a belief, held by many, that becoming better at time management and productivity is something you learn once and then you're set.  Or all you need to do is buy the latest productivity tool and all your struggles disappear.  Hahaha, it's not quite so easy.  Theoretically, it may be possible to add a new app or use a new process for getting your work done. Unfortunately, life doesn't fit perfectly into the little boxes we create. There's always something different or new.  This is why the idea of plotting out every minute of your day on your calendar doesn't work in practice.  Simple, natural things are not always predictable. You don't know when you will need a bathroom break, or if a colleague asks you a question, or perhaps you spill your coffee all over your desk.  If any of these things happen when you have carefully mapped out every minute of your day, your day is ruined.  The missing pieces are flexibility and practice, and that is where this week's question comes in.  So, let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question.  This week's question comes from Kathy. Kathy asks, Hi Carl, I've recently taken your Time Sector System course and loved it. One thing that's worrying me, though, is that no matter how well I plan my week, by Tuesday, my whole plan is ruined. Do you have any tips on staying on plan when things become hectic? Hi Kathy, thank you for your question.  This is a common discovery. Once you know the theory, putting it into practice can show up bumps in the road that cause problems.  One of the first problems people face is changing habits. If, for instance, you've never planned a week or a day, getting into the habit of consistently doing so is hard.  After all, you've spent most of your life so far without having a plan; skipping a daily or weekly planning session isn't going to cause too many problems.  Yet when you are building your system, it's that skipping that causes a problem. The more times you don't do it, the longer it will take you to build the essential habits.  The goal is to use your new knowledge automatically. When you're processing your inbox, you instinctively know what to do. It's like there's a voice in your head asking the three questions: What is it? What do I need to do with it? When will I do it? When you start, asking these questions can be slow. You're naturally thinking too much. But when you've done it consistently for a few weeks, you think less, and you automatically move things to their rightful place.  Today, I can process an inbox of twenty items in less than 6 minutes. When I first started following this sequence of questions, though, it would easily have taken me twenty to thirty minutes. I was overthinking and learning patterns.  In one scene in The Man With the Golden Gun, Bond and Scaramanga are having lunch. The lunch begins amiably, but soon turns hostile. At one point, Bond reaches into his coat pocket to pull out his gun. The camera pans to Scaramanga, who is pointing his legendary golden gun at Bond.  The surprising thing here is that Scaramanga had to build his gun from a golden cigarette case, a lighter, a fountain pen, and a cufflink. All Bond had to do was pull his gun from his shoulder holster.  How was Scaramanga faster? Practice.  How many hours would Scaramanga have had to practice putting his gun together to get that fast?  I know, it's fiction. But the point is, you get faster the more you do something.  This is why people who continually switch apps are also consistently behind on their work. They remain stuck at being slow.  What's happening there is they have to learn new ways of getting things into their system, and then moving tasks, and learning all the new features. And that doesn't account for the time it takes to move everything over to the new app.  It's dead time. Instead, sticking with the apps you already have forces you to get better and faster at using them.  Then we come to the realisation that no two weeks are ever the same. No matter how carefully we plan something, things will inevitably go wrong.  This is where practice and experience come in.  I have a client who travels for work a lot. Sometimes he travels domestically; other times he travels internationally, often to the other side of the world, which involves 20 hours of flying time.  He found the Time Sector System worked brilliantly when he was working from his office, but it fell apart when he had to travel.  When we analysed the problem, we discovered that he was trying to run things the same way while travelling as he did at his office.  How many times have you booked a flight, found that WIFI would be available for the flight and thought, ah, I'll catch up on my email and messages when flying, only to discover that the WIFI doesn't work? Now, you could respond to your actionable emails while flying, but you won't be able to send them until you get into a WIFI zone. But that disruption to your plans can leave you feeling very frustrated.  The solution in this case was to have a travelling routine. On days when my client was travelling, he reduced his task list to the essentials. Rescheduling or postponing routine tasks  He also set up a routine for international travel, using the flight time to plan and clean things up. None of which required WIFI.  The first few times he used this new process, he found he needed to make adjustments, but after a few tries, he had it working perfectly.  And that's the key part. Build in flexibility.  In my client's case, it was not to try and follow the same system when travelling as he does when at the office.  When you plan your week, allow for the unexpected.  One way to do this is to ensure that, when you plan your week, you have time for the essential things. That would be your core work and the parts of your life you have decided are important. Time with family and friends, hobbies and exercise, for example.  Once you have those on your calendar, then really you have the beginnings of a solid plan that should be flexible enough.  Hopefully, you have already locked in your core work.  When I was a teacher, I had an hour each day protected for class preparation. I was teaching around four to five hours a day; those times were fixed each month and were non-negotiable. I had to be in the classroom teaching.  The class preparation time did change from day to day, but it was always there, and I tried to fix it around the same time each day, which made it much easier to make it a habit.  The unknowns often come from project work. Projects, by their very nature, are unique. Each one requires something different. You will find that while you may not be able to plan precisely what needs to be done at a weekly level, scheduling time to work on your projects each week will help ensure you have enough time to keep these moving forward.  If you've ever read Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, you will no doubt remember the chapter: Sharpen the Saw.  In the chapter, Stephen Covey uses the example of a wood cutter who's working so hard that they never stop to sharpen the saw. Over time, the time required to cut the tree increases, not because the woodcutter is getting weaker, but because the saw is becoming blunter.  Your time management and productivity skills operate the same way. Sometimes you have to stop and sharpen your skills.  For example, I use an iPhone, and every time Apple updates its iPhone operating system, I review my collecting methods to see if anything in the new software will make collecting faster.  For example, when Apple added the action button to their phones, it let me map that button to add tasks to my task manager's inbox. It's super fast, and after a few days it became automatic for me to tap the action button when I needed to add something.  The most productive people I know spend time improving their ability to produce. This is why athletes train, musicians practise scales, pilots rehearse procedures, and surgeons continually update their skills. The performance people see is only possible because of the preparation and practice nobody sees. This is also why the Scaramanga quote fits this question. His point was essentially the same. As he said: “The rest of the time I maintain my skills.” Scaramanga's version is darker, of course, but the principle is identical. Exceptional performance is not the result of the moment itself; it's the result of the time spent preparing for that moment. If you find that by Tuesday your plan for the week looks destroyed, allow for that when you plan your week.  One way you can do this is to plan your objectives.  What is it that you want to get accomplished next week? These could be: To finish an important proposal Get on top of your emails To clean up the garden  To exercise a minimum of four times To update your LinkedIn profile With these five objectives, you can then decide when you will do them.  One tip here is to front-load your week with these activities. This way, if you do get waylaid, there's still time to recover in the week.  This reminds me of a story from one of the world's top rugby coaches. When he joined a new team, he found that if the team got ahead early in the game, they invariably won.  However, when they went behind early on, the likelihood was they would lose.  When he analysed this, he found that the team panicked when they fell behind, dropped their plan, and spent too much of the game taking unnecessary risks to get ahead.  He reminded the team that it was an 80-minute game and that what really mattered was sticking to their plan.  Tackle aggressively, maintain their defensive line and minimise mistakes. If they stuck to that, they would likely end the game ahead.  You don't win games in the first twenty minutes. You win the game over 80 minutes. It's the same for you, Kathy; you don't win or lose the week early on. You win the week by sticking to your plan and making adjustments where necessary, without losing sight of it.  I hope that has helped. Thank you for your question. And thank you to you, too, for listening.  It just remains for me to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

You Got It Episode 258 Gets Into Feeling Calm, Celebrating my Momma, Knowing When it's Your Time, Spurs Win Game 3, Trump at the Game, Texas Tech Qb Reinstated, Abortion No No, Dat Bihh Gahh, Streamer University Trailer Drops and More!! Tap In!?

“In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics, you get shortsighted; if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.” That was Tom Seaver, an outstanding baseball player. And it points to an important factor in managing your time and being productive.  And it's a single word: Consistency.  Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   The COD Productivity Method  Learn more about the Quiet Productivity Method here   Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 420 Hello, and welcome to episode 420 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 seems to be a consistency crisis. If you were to analyse anyone who has been successful at anything, you would find that, hidden behind that success, lies a high degree of consistency in following the basics.  Last week, I talked about your standards. Setting your standards and staying true to them. Well, a close relation to your standards is consistency.  Yet, consistency is hard. It's boring, and your brain is often your worst enemy. It tells you that you're tired; you can take a rest. Or you can skip today. You've been busy; it's okay.  But it's not okay. Not if you want to develop your consistency. So how can you stay consistent, even on your worst days? That's what we're looking at today.  So, to get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question. This week's question comes from Stephan. Stephan asks, “Hi Carl, I've been following the COD system for almost a year now, and I know it works. Most days I do well. I collect, and I organise. But I am not consistent. What can I do to get consistent organising and planning my days? Hi Stephan, thank you for your question.  Now, before we begin, I am not going to advocate that you turn yourself into a non-communicative monk. There does need to be some flexibility. Yet to succeed at anything, you will find that, somewhere in the mix, something needs to be done consistently.  Something in the quote I began this podcast with from Tom Seaver jumped out at me. The line was: “If you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.” I know from experience and from feedback from those who have taken my Email Mastery course that if you consistently spend 30 minutes or more on your actionable emails, your email will never get out of control.  The numbers take care of themselves.  This means when you plan your day, you ask yourself where you will find time for communications.  Managing your communications is not about the number of messages you get. We all get too many. There are messages that need answering, messages for information we should read, and a lot of messages we can ignore and delete.  But, when you begin the day, you have no idea how many you will get and of what type they will be. This means you cannot plan for the number or type of message that needs to be replied to. Numbers don't count. Yet, if you know each day that you will spend at least 30 minutes on them, it's unlikely you will ever have an out-of-control inbox.  Some days you will clear them; other days, you won't. But as long as you're consistent, the numbers will stay low.  Your consistency will take care of the numbers.  When it comes to COD, that's the collect, organise and do framework. The only area that needs deliberate consistency is the organising.  You see, once you have established your UCT (Universal Collection Tool), you will naturally collect everything that needs to be collected. And if you have that set up properly, what you collect will drop into your trusted inbox.  However, the key is organising what you collected and that involves asking three questions: What is it? A note, an appointment or a task What do I need to do with it? Move it to your calendar, add it to your notes or process the task so that you can ask… When will I do it? That would be either this week, next week, this month, next month or sometime in the long-term.  If you consistently do the organising step, you will become very fast at organising.  When I began following COD, I confess it would take me 20 to 30 minutes on some days. That was because I collected a lot, and asking and answering the three questions was slow.  But I stuck to it. I went through the exciting first stage, then the boring middle (where you ask yourself if it's worth it) and finally to the stage where it was automatic.  And the benefit was that, as I was pushing through the boring middle, my brain was establishing patterns that sped up the organising stage.  Now, I can clear an inbox of fifteen to twenty items in less than 5 minutes. Something that used to take at least 15 minutes.  But there are other factors here.  The biggest factor, aside from consistency, is that I don't change my tools. I've been using Todoist for 15 years, Evernote for 17 and Apple Calendar for 25. I know these tools inside out. I've set up keyboard shortcuts, and they are now part of my muscle memory.  When any of these tools update and add features, I will look at the new features and ask myself whether each will improve my workflow and make things faster. If not, I don't use the new feature.  Evernote, for example, has recently added an AI-enabled feature that automatically assigns a title to a note. Nice. But it takes me less than ten seconds to add a title, and I know from the mistakes I've made in the past that if I don't add a title that means something to me, I'll not be able to find the note as quickly as I would like in the future.  So, I don't use that feature.  So, how do you become more consistent? There are two things that will help.  The first is to start small.  Doing a huge overhaul of your system and adding multiple steps to keep it organised will ultimately fail. You're asking too much of yourself.  Instead, pick one area.  For example, when you've run COD for a while, you will realise that your notes rarely contain anything urgent. The urgent area will be what you throw into your task manager.  This means you can start by committing to yourself to always process your task manager's inbox at the end of your workday, and to leave your notes, perhaps organising and cleaning up, once a week.  When you make this commitment, don't just imagine you will be able to do this from your laptop while sitting at your desk. Consider how you will do it if all you have is your mobile phone.  While I like to do my organising on my laptop at my desk, there are days when I am travelling and cannot.  However, checking my task manager's inbox each day is a must, so I will do that on my phone.  I've done this from airport lounges, buses, my parents' living room and once from a motorway service station.  Another area where consistency is incredibly helpful is doing the daily planning.  Daily planning involves three steps.  The first is to check your calendar to see where your appointments are tomorrow and where you need to be in the morning. (20 seconds max?) The second is to curate your to-do list so that your tasks for tomorrow are realistic. (Around two to three minutes)  And finally, to decide what your two must-do tasks are for the day. (Another 2 to 3 minutes)  When you are consistent with this, it will take you no more than 5 minutes. And best of all, if you are pushed, you could do this from your mobile phone.  One of the benefits of consistency is that you no longer need to look at how much you have to do.  Because you are consistently planning, clearing your communications, and protecting time for your most important work, all you need to do is ensure you are prioritising the right things each day, and the number of things to do will take care of itself.  I recently saw a documentary on Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese football player (soccer player for my friends across the pond).  Ronaldo is 41 years old and is playing in a record sixth World Cup this summer.  How has he remained at the top of the sport for so long? Can you guess? Consistency.  Interviews with former teammates talk of a person who turns up for training an hour before anyone else. Who stays and practices his shooting long after his teammates have finished and a person who prioritises sleep and diet. Ronaldo was doing that long before other professional footballers were.  When asked about it, Ronaldo says he learnt early in his career that consistently paying attention to what matters was the key to getting to the top.  Being consistently on time for meetings, handing in work on time and doing what you say you will do when you say you will do it are just examples of good manners and professionalism. Not doing so damages your chances of promotion.  But I again go back to what I said earlier: don't try to change everything at once. Pick something you want to improve and start there.  It takes time and effort to build consistency. If you have to remind yourself to do something, you're not ready to move to the next one.  Doing my focused work in the morning and allowing 45 minutes each day for my communications didn't happen overnight. It was a stuttering start. Yet, eventually, it just happened. I no longer needed to think about it.  It's the same with doing my daily planning each evening. Today, I cannot imagine not going to bed without knowing where my appointments are tomorrow and what my must-do tasks are.  That's how you build consistency. One step at a time. Now you mentioned the COD system, Stephan, and on that subject I do have some news. I've just cleaned everything up and added a new quick start guide to the resources section.  If you're already enrolled, head over to the course on your dashboard, and you will see the guide at the bottom.  If you're not enrolled and want to learn more about COD, you can do so for free by taking the COD course. I will leave a link for it in the show notes for you.  Thank you, Stephan, for your question, and thank you to you, too, for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

In this special replay episode of It's Your Time, Michelle sits down with Medtronic leader Natalie de Minaur to explore what it really means to trust yourself, embrace change, and have the courage to pivot when life calls you in a new direction. Together they discuss redefining success, building self-confidence, navigating career transitions, setting boundaries, protecting your energy, and letting go of the belief that your path has to look like everyone else's. If you've been feeling pulled toward something new but fear, doubt, or uncertainty keep holding you back, this conversation is a powerful reminder that growth rarely happens inside your comfort zone—and that self-confidence isn't having all the answers. It's trusting that you'll figure it out along the way. In this episode you'll learn: • How to redefine success for your current season of life • Why comparing your journey to others keeps you stuck • The connection between self-trust and confidence • How to protect your energy and avoid burnout • Why pivots often become the catalyst for growth • How to quiet self-doubt and listen to your inner wisdom Because sometimes the next version of your life begins with one brave decision.

If you follow the English Premier League, you will know that Arsenal won the Premier League title a couple of weeks ago.  It's been a tough 6-year journey for their manager, Mikel Arteta, but what stood out is that no matter how hard things got, Arteta stuck to the standards he set at the club and, more importantly, focused on following his plan.  He knew that to take Arsenal back to the top, there had to be a plan, and to ensure the plan was followed, standards needed to be set. In this week's episode, we're looking at how your standards matter and why having a plan to fall back on will always give you clarity, focus and make better decision-making easier.   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   Learn more about the Quiet Productivity Method here Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 419 Hello, and welcome to episode 419 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.  If you've followed me for any length of time, you will know I have written and spoken a lot about having standards.  Standards for how Long it takes you to respond to emails and messages, and how you manage your calendar, for example.  It's the standards you set for yourself that will ensure that you do the right things day after day. That if things go wrong, you have something to fall back on that feels familiar and keeps you doing the right things.  My communication standard is to respond to emails within 24 hours. This means that no matter how busy I am, if I have an actionable email I have not responded to that is approaching the 24-hour limit, I will do whatever it takes to respond, even if that means working a little extra time at the end of the day.  This week's question is related to these approaches. So to get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question. This week's question comes from Sonya. Sonya asks, Hi Carl, I love COD and the Time Sector System. Both have really helped me to get much more focused on what matters to me. But what frustrates me is that I still have too many days when I procrastinate and don't get what I want done. How do you stay so consistent?  Hi Sonya, thank you for your question. As I alluded to, it comes down to the standards you set for yourself. I know that sounds easy, and I know it is not, but the standards you set are what help you push through when you are not in the right frame of mind to do what needs to be done.  Let me explain.  It can be very tempting, when you have just finished reading a book or have taken a course, to be full of enthusiasm to change things.  And that's not a bad thing. But it's important to be realistic when setting up your processes and new way of doing things.  If you were to set up a two-hour closing-down routine at the end of each day, you would fail. It's too long.  Similarly, I've seen people get excited by the idea of having a solid morning routine. Then they add so many things to their morning routine that it takes them two or three hours to complete them.  That's never going to promote consistency. There will inevitably be days when you cannot complete those routines, and then you get it into your head that you're a failure or that having routines doesn't work for you. Neither of which is true.  The place to begin is with your non-negotiables. What must happen every day, no matter what?  I know many people, for instance, who will not go to bed until all the dishes have been washed and put away.  That might seem a small thing, but to the people who do that, it is their standard. They couldn't imagine going to bed without doing it.  One standard I try to get my coaching clients to follow is to do a five-minute daily planning session before they end their day.  That planning session is to review your calendar for appointments, look at your list of tasks, make sure it is realistic and to decide what your two must-do tasks will be.  That's it. Five minutes tops.  This is a realistic planning session. You can do it from your sofa and on your phone if necessary.  Once you have set it as a standard, you do this every day, including weekends and holidays. Now, weekends and holidays are easier. You will likely have fewer tasks and appointments, but it's a standard. You do it anyway.  Consistency can be hard when you don't have any clear standards. Yet, those standards need to be realistic.  One way to do this is to set minimums.  Imagine you decide to read a book every day. Now, I've seen people set very unrealistic targets here. This usually begins with deciding to read something like 50 books per year, which is then broken down into reading a book a week.  So far so good.  But what happens if you read something like Andrew Roberts' book on Winston Churchill or Walter Isaacson's biography of Leonardo Da Vinci? Both are over 1,000 pages. Those books will take you longer than a week to read.  That's why this kind of target setting is wrong.  Let's start with what your purpose is here. Is it to read a set number of books? If so, choose short books, and you'll hit your target. But it's more likely that you want to build the habit of reading. This means it doesn't matter how many books you read in any given year. All that matters is that you spend time reading each day.  So set a realistic minimum.  If you were to set the target at reading for a minimum of twenty minutes each day, it would not be long before you settled into a routine and just did your reading.  What happens is that the books you get into and enjoy reading, you'll read for longer than twenty minutes. Slower, harder books will likely have you reading for twenty minutes. That's fine; you're still reading. You did what you set out to do, and after twenty minutes, you can stop.  That's a realistic standard to set for yourself and one likely to become a non-negotiable.  Incidentally, you can do this with exercise and dealing with your messages. Set a daily minimum amount of time you will spend doing these activities.  And I should say there is some psychology behind the twenty-minute minimum. If you were to tell yourself you will spend an hour on a particular activity every day, your brain will push back.  On the days you are feeling tired, a little sick or ‘just not in the mood', that one hour will feel like an eternity. Twenty minutes, on the other hand, seems achievable, no matter how you feel. Remember, it's a minimum. Once you've done your twenty minutes, you can stop. Often you won't, but you can if you are still not feeling up to it.  I do this with my emails and messages. I like to finish my day with all actionable messages cleared. But there are days when, for one reason or another, I cannot do so. I then apply the twenty-minute minimum.  I tell myself I will spend twenty minutes clearing as many as I can.  It's this standard that makes it easy to keep on top of messages.  I began this episode by explaining how Arsenal's manager, Mikel Arteta, turned around the club by setting non-negotiable standards.  Arteta's attitude is that if you cannot accept these standards, then you're out the door. It's as simple as that.  And I saw this with Manchester United's former manager, a brilliant manager, Alex Ferguson. Ferguson took over the management of Manchester United in 1986. On his arrival, he set about setting some very high standards at the club.  It took around four years, but by setting those standards, Manchester United turned the 1990s into Manchester United's greatest generation.  Change is hard. It's particularly hard to stick to your new set of standards when things don't seem to be improving. When there's no immediate payoff.  Your old habits don't want to die, and they will fight to stay around. This is why trying to change everything all at once almost always fails.  Instead, start small. Daily planning is an easy place to start because all you are doing is reviewing your appointments for the next day, ensuring your list of tasks is realistic, and identifying your must-do tasks.  With practice, you will be able to do this in about two minutes, and the more you practice, the more you see the benefits of having clarity on what must be done and where you need to be each day.  From there, add in a weekly planning session. This is where you set your plan for the week and decide your objectives. It is not about reviewing all your tasks and projects. You're not reviewing, you're planning. Reviewing is entirely different.  The best time to review a project is when you've just finished working on it. The project is fresh in your mind, and you will know precisely what needs to happen next.  It's by having a plan that you will find you procrastinate less. You don't become frozen by the number of things you need to do. You know what your objectives are for the week, and you will do what needs to be done to accomplish them.  Commit to your plan, and you will have the energy to push towards it. Without a plan, you'll procrastinate because all you will see is a mountain of work to do, and you have no idea what to do or where to start.  Let me show you this in action:  Imagine you have thousands of emails in your email inbox, and you are desperate to get it under control and clean it out. But the sheer size of it freezes you. Where do you start? What would be the best way to go about it? And you'll be thinking this will take forever.  But what if you decided to start with the oldest ones and spend a minimum of 20 minutes a day on this project until it's done?  Let's be honest, if you've got thousands of emails in your inbox, it doesn't really matter where you start. You've just got to start somewhere.  Twenty minutes a day, from the oldest to the newest. Now that's a plan. And you'll find that by starting with the oldest first, you'll be deleting a lot. Most of what you have will be out of date, moved on or already resolved. That builds momentum, which in itself generates energy.  If you'd like to learn more about setting your non-negotiables, having a plan for the day and a set of clear objectives for the week, my recently released Quiet Productivity Method programme will help you.  It's packed with ideas like these, along with the right set of tools to give you clarity, focus, and a sense of calm throughout your day.  I'll leave a link in the show notes for you to learn more about this immersive programme.  Thank you, Sonya, for your question, and I hope this answer has helped.  Thank you also to you for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you a very, very productive week.   

Is it possible to remain calm and focused when everything around us is getting faster, noisier and seemingly more demanding?  I think it is, and in this week's episode, I'll share some of my insights so you, too, can remain productive in a quiet, focused way.  Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   Learn more about the Quiet Productivity Method here Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived   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 | 418 Hello, and welcome to episode 418 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.  Recently, I had a call with one of my coaching clients who is completely on board with AI. He's gone down the usual rabbit hole of ChatGPT, then Claude, then back to ChatGPT, then to Google's Gemini and now he's obsessed with Claude again.  It reminded me of the late twenty-teens when everyone was switching between Evernote, Notion, Apple Notes, and then Roam Research. It was an amusing merry-go-round.  One of the ironic things about my client is that he'd had to wake up at 5:00 am to review the materials for a workshop he was delivering that day because he suddenly thought Claude might not have given the correct information, and he needed to check everything before 9:00 am.  I asked him how long he usually took to prepare for a workshop like this, and he replied that it normally took three or four hours. However, he said emphatically, with Claude's help, it's taking him around six to eight hours. I did point out the obvious. With AI's help, it's taking twice as long, but he dismissed that, saying AI was the future and that by doing it this way, he was learning and would eventually be faster.  Fair point.  But he did have to wake up two hours earlier than normal. Not something I would enjoy doing.  This reminded me that life, whether it's our personal or our professional lives, shouldn't be lived at speed. Life should be lived at our own pace.  Two YouTube videos I recently watched emphasised this. One was by Matt D' Avella, and the other was from Samurai Matcha.  In Matt's video, entitled I Tried to Optimise my Life. It made it Worse, Matt pointed out that trying to live a productive life left him feeling frustrated. All the curated lists and time blocks on his calendar just set him up for failure.  If he didn't clear his to-do list or he was unable to follow his time blocks, he'd end the day feeling that he'd failed. This left him feeling miserable all evening and wondering what was wrong with him. Then I watched Samurai Matcha's video entitled “10 Real Japanese Organisation Tricks”, in which he explained why his girlfriend's organisation philosophy was brilliant.  Her philosophy was that the goal of organising is to always know where everything is. This meant that things were stacked so you could see what was in a cupboard or refrigerator as soon as you opened the door. That clothes were arranged so that, just by looking in a wardrobe, you could instantly see what was in there.  It isn't about having everything look pretty and tidy, only to be unable to find what you are looking for. It's about knowing instantly where everything is.  So there you have one person trying to optimise everything and setting himself up for failure every day. And another who is essentially working by her own logic, making her life as simple and easy as possible.  You can guess who was the more relaxed, settled and happy with life.  And this is the point. Life's not about optimising everything. We're human beings, but we're trying to turn ourselves into machines that can be programmed to wake up at a particular time, jump into a bath of freezing water, do a two-hour morning exercise routine, spend an hour writing morning pages and then finish it all off with twenty minutes of meditation.  That's not what life is about at all.  One way to get started in creating a calmer, quieter way of living is to begin with your non-negotiables. What are the things you must do each day? There are the obvious ones, such as sleeping, brushing your teeth, washing and eating. Most of those our bodies have ways of ensuring we do them. We get sleepy, and we get hungry.  But what other things would be non-negotiable for you?  For me, taking Louis out for his walk, doing a little exercise and enjoying a cup of tea with my wife when she gets home from university are non-negotiable at a personal level.  At a professional level, my non-negotiable is spending 2 hours a day creating. That could be writing, recording or planning. It doesn't matter what I create; all that matters is that I create something.  And that's it. Together, that's around four to five hours a day.  Once you have established what your non-negotiables are, it becomes easy to say no to things that could interfere with them.  Another way to bring some calm and quiet back into your life is to focus on time not what you have to do.  Let me explain.  Most of what comes at us each day is not within our control. You do not know how many Slack or Teams messages you will get today. Neither do you know how many emails you will get nor what you will be asked to do.  What you do know is how much time you can dedicate to these inputs.  Over the years, I've learnt that if I allow 40 minutes or so each day to respond to my actionable messages and emails, I'll mostly stay on top of my communications. Sure, occasionally I am behind, but as I can see I am getting behind, I can allow a little extra time to catch up if necessary.  I also know that if I have two hours a day to create, I'll always hit my publication schedule.  If you work on projects, what would happen if you dedicated 2 hours a day to quiet, focused work on them? No distractions, no interruptions, just quiet, focused work. From the people I've worked with who have done this, they're amazed at just how much work they get done each week. And how deadlines no longer become stressful or missed.  Two hours may not seem much, but over a working week, that's ten uninterrupted hours. Ten hours you know you will not be interrupted by anyone.  The great thing about this approach is that you gain control over your time. And with a little consistency, you soon find yourself on top of your work.  You also learn where your limits are.  I know my brain gets tired around the 90-minute to 2-hour mark of focused work.  Sure, there are days I would love to spend three hours in focused work, but experience has taught me that the extra hour is a wasted hour. I make more mistakes; I start snatching a quick look at my messages and emails, looking for anything to distract me. That pile of washing suddenly needs to be put away, or those cups and dishes need washing and putting away.  Once you know your limits, you can work within them.  This approach is a more human way to go about your day. It's not optimised to create impossible days, leaving you feeling exhausted, unfulfilled and disappointed with yourself.  It's set up to work with your strengths and, more importantly, with your biorhythms. Your body's natural rhythms.  The advantage of this kinder, calmer way of going about your day is that you naturally slow down. You have the space to deal with the urgencies and the demands of your bosses, clients and colleagues. And that results in fewer mistakes, leaving you with less corrective work to do.  The problem with being human is that we are really quite fragile. My client, who woke up at 5:00 am to fix Claude's mistakes, will find the afternoon a dead zone. He'll be exhausted and trying to operate at 100% with less than five hours of sleep.  That lack of sleep will likely affect his food choices at lunchtime. He'll probably grab a quick sandwich or something else high in carbohydrates, which will spike his insulin levels, leaving him feeling drowsy afterwards.  And then we're also susceptible to all sorts of bugs and illnesses, which can have a debilitating effect on our energy levels.  Again, not within our control unless we seal ourselves off from the outside world. Not a great idea.  I can assure you that the best approach to managing time and improving your productivity is to be human about it. Work with you and your natural state, rather than trying to be like a machine.  Take care of your three foundations: get enough sleep, eat healthy and move frequently.  Then, have a plan for the day. Not a minute-by-minute plan, but one that takes care of your non-negotiables, allows for some focused work time and has enough flexibility to take care of unknowns that will inevitably pop up throughout the day.  Since the 1980s, technological advances have consistently promised us less work and more leisure time. And yet that's never materialised. Instead, the opposite happens.  Smartphones took business communications out of the office and made them omnipresent, leaving us with no place to hide. The desktop computer eliminated the typing pool and left managers and executives responsible for crafting their own letters and emails.  Cloud computing eliminated the filing cabinet and placed company documents within our reach 24/7, even when we were supposed to be on vacation.  What's more, all this technological advancement has sped everything up. And it's this speeding up that has left us with so much more to do. What used to take us three or four days to do is now expected to be done in an hour.  That's where the problem is.  Fortunately, there are ways to mitigate this: be human. Make your own decisions about what you work on and when. Wrestle back control of your calendar and protect time to do the things that matter.  These are simple steps, not easy to implement initially, but worth putting the effort into implementing them.  As Matt D'Avella has discovered, and Samurai Matcha's girlfriend already knew, keeping things human, simple and logical to yourself is the best way to live in a calm, quiet, focused way. Now, before I go, if what you've heard today in this podcast resonated with you and you want to learn more, my Quiet Productivity Method programme will do just that.  Recently updated to cover your non-negotiables, the superb daybook system and how to plan your days and weeks so you are living within your time means, this programme will teach you, step by step, how to create a system that works for you. How to find time for what you want, and much more. In addition, you will also become a part of the Quiet Productivity Method community, where you can share ideas, ask questions and join the monthly live sessions that will answer your questions and hold you accountable as you move away from the unsustainable task-based systems of old and towards a sustainable, humane, time-based system.  I do hope you can join me.  Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

There's a conflict in time management and productivity that few people ever talk about. That's the conflict between being productive and being responsive.  It's almost like the Ying and Yang of life. A sort of Newtonian “everything has an equal and opposite reaction.” While we may want to shut ourselves away and give our full focus to an important piece of work, there's always someone, somewhere, who wants to interrupt us and keep us from being productive.  It's this that we will be looking at this week. Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   Learn more and register for the Ultimate Productivity Workshop here. Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 417 Hello, and welcome to episode 417 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'm sure we've all been there. We have an important piece of work to complete, and we need a good two or three hours of uninterrupted focus to do it.  We block our calendars and pre-plan our day to minimise the risk of anything happening that will interrupt our plan.  And then the day starts, you turn up for work, and all hell has broken loose. Bosses and colleagues are in a panic, and you're told you must attend an urgent meeting in twenty minutes. No ifs or buts, you must attend.  Argh! It's enough to have you asking what the point is in making plans when this always happens.  Well, not so fast. It's just Newton's third law of Motion acting in a way Sir Isaac Newton never expected.  The pressure of needing two or three hours of quiet, focused work is matched by the force of people needing your attention right now. Finding the antidote to this phenomenon is what this week's question is all about.  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 Tim. Tim asks, “ Hi Carl, I've tried to do time blocking for years and have never found a way to stick with it. My colleagues always seem to have urgent questions or need me to do something right now. Do you have any ideas to avoid this from happening?  Hi Tim, thank you for your question.  You may have heard of the concept of manager vs maker (or sometimes producer). A manager's role is to ensure the work is getting done, allocate resources, and hold meetings.  A maker's role is to produce the work.  The conflict is between the manager's need to know what's happening and the maker's need for uninterrupted time to produce the work the manager is chasing.  In my experience working with teams, the best teams are those where managers trust their teams to get the work done. Where the flow of information is smooth and works both ways, and the need for “update” meetings is minimal.  The most ineffective teams are those where managers constantly want to know what's happening, are unclear about what they want and by when, and don't protect their team from interruptions.  You can tell these managers by the number of “status” meetings they have each week. Every day is full of them. I remember seeing an interview with Toto Wolff, the CEO and team principal of the Mercedes-Benz Formula 1 racing team. In one response to a question, he said: “My role is to hire the best people, tell them what I want, and then get out of the way and let them do their work.”  Toto Wolff is not an engineer or aerodynamicist, but he is an excellent leader and manager.  Many of the software engineers I've spoken with tell me they need about 4 to 6 hours a day to focus on writing code. And even with the help of AI, there's still a lot of focused work required.  AI doesn't magically produce code. It needs prompting, the right context given and a clear outcome. And the results need to be carefully checked and tested. A lot of focused work. The answer to many of these issues for the people who produce the work is to use time blocking.  Now, time blocking often gets abused. I've seen countless articles and videos suggesting that you block every hour (and sometimes minute) with something.  This is wrong. That's not time blocking. That's setting yourself up for failure, bordering on self-abuse.  Time blocking that works is when you protect two or three hours a day for deeper, focused work. You then leave the rest of the day open for meetings, interruptions and lighter work such as responding to messages and emails.  It's balancing the need for being productive with the need to be responsive.  Yet it's also about putting in place barriers that help you get your work done, and communicating to your colleagues and bosses that you cannot be disturbed right now.  I've found it's that communication step people struggle with. There seems to be a fear that people will think less of you because you are not available to their every whim when they need you.  Complete fallacy. The people in your organisation who get the most respect are the ones who are strict about when they are available and when they are not. They have clear barriers, and no one crosses those barriers.  The people who get the least respect and are often the ones left behind on the promotion ladder have no barriers. They are always willing to stop and chat about this, that, and the other.  These are the people who end up taking their work home and are always the last to submit on a project.  As Jim Rohn said, "When you work, work. When you play, play. Don't mix the two.” The problem here is that when you don't set boundaries and are always available, your bosses feel they have to supervise you more. You get caught in a vicious circle.  And because you are always submitting your work at the last minute, you're being interrupted by colleagues and bosses asking how you're getting on.  When it comes to protecting time on your calendar for focused work, timing is everything.  According to several studies, around 80% of people are at their most focused and creative in the morning. This means, if you want to produce your best work, do it when you are at your most focused and creative.  If that is the morning, protect time in the morning and leave your afternoons open for discussions, meetings and other responsive tasks.  To give you one example, I have a client who is a software engineer.  She's the manager of a team of engineers, and each morning at 8:30 am, they have a 15-minute ‘stand-up meeting' to inform everyone of their plan for the day. (They all follow the Daily Planning Sequence).  This informs the team when each of them will be doing their focused work time (usually a three-hour block), what meetings they have, and when they will be available to discuss projects.  My client blocks her calendar from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm for doing her focused work, but does allow 9:00 am to 9:30 am to discuss any issues with individual team members or her bosses.  Then 9:30 hits, and she shuts down Slack and email, opens up her coding software, and for the next three hours, it's complete and total focus time.  Since she and her team adopted this practice, they've never missed a deadline, and no one ever has to take work home. And more importantly, their productivity, as individuals and as a team, has shot through the roof. This has the added benefit of their bosses now knowing not to disturb them during focus time. There's plenty of time to update projects or gather information before and after a focus block.  It works. It's balancing the need to be productive with the need to be responsive. And during an eight-hour workday, her team is only unavailable for three hours, not all at once. So there is always someone available to field questions from higher-ups and clients, if necessary. Now, there is another block I would highly recommend, and this one will help to reduce and even eliminate backlogs. This is the communications and admin hour.  Let's be honest, Slack and Teams didn't do what they promised. Make communicating between teams and colleagues easier and faster. All these tools have done is take away the immediacy of email, move it to another tool, and made it noisier than email ever was.  We still get far too many communications, and far too many low-value and time-wasting messages.  The problem today is the one we've faced since the dawn of email: the feeling that we must respond immediately. Now, I'll take you back to the two opposing forces at play in your workday: the need to be productive and the need to be responsive.  If you were 100% productive, you wouldn't be communicating with anyone and would be focused solely on your work. If you were 100% responsive, you'd never get any work done, as you'd be responding to interruptions and answering questions and messages all day.  So, there's a need to find some balance.  In my real-life tests, I've found that if you set aside an hour later in the day to respond to your messages, backlogs rarely occur, and if they do, they remain under control.  This only works, though, if you are consistent with this method.  You'll never be on top of your messages if you sporadically deal with them throughout the week.  But if you consistently spend an hour or so responding to these messages and catching up on relevant threads, you'll never feel overwhelmed, and if things do build up, adding an extra 30 minutes is often all you need to get things under control.  Now, let's deal with the elephant in the room. You're open calendar.  Time blocking will never work if you do not get control of your calendar and get in first. In other words, your focus block and your communications and admin time should be pre-blocked on your calendar.  I've seen people wait until Monday morning to find time to get their productive work done, only to discover their calendar is full of meetings.  No, no, no. It doesn't work like that.  You have to go into your calendar and begin protecting time today. Perhaps your calendar is now full for the next two weeks. If so, go out three weeks in the future and set up some recurring blocks of time for doing your productive work now.  You can change these later if the time you've protected is needed for something important, but if you don't do it now, you will never do it, and the pattern you're stuck in today will be the same pattern you're stuck in in three weeks. I would also recommend setting these up as recurring blocks. That makes your life easier, and you soon come to respect these time blocks.  This also makes planning the week simpler. Knowing that you've got a couple of hours each day protected for your productive work, you can assign dates to your work more confidently. I know when I begin the week, that I will have time on Thursday to write this script. I have time protected for doing so.  So there you go, Tim. I hope that has helped.  Look at the work you do, calculate where your balance between being productive and responsive lies, and then reflect that in your calendar.  I mentioned two hours a day for focused work, but if you are in a role that requires you to be particularly responsive, you may only allow one hour a day. But that is far better than nothing.  Good luck, and thank you for your question.  Thank you to you, too, for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

"Don't sit around waiting to feel motivated. You take some little actions, and that often gives you the motivation and the momentum to move forward." Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, sit down to work through a HerMoney.com list of ten things to do when retirement is a decade away. The meta-lesson turns out to be bigger than any single item on it! The list, from Jean Chatzky's financial information service for women, gives them a useful scaffold, but what they keep returning to is the paralysis that keeps so many people from starting at all. Planning for retirement can feel like pushing a stone uphill; getting moving makes it roll the other way. The list items themselves span the practical and the personal. Test-drive potential retirement destinations before committing. Tackle home repairs now, while you still have a paycheck. Start volunteering, not just to give back but to road-test how you'll spend your time when work no longer fills it. On the financial side: understand what Medicare actually covers (spoiler: not dental, vision, or long-term care). Build your HSA if you're eligible. Track down old 401(k)s and check the beneficiaries on every account. Create your Social Security account online and verify your earnings record for errors. And on claiming age, Kevin pushes back on the blanket advice to "always wait" because Social Security strategy depends on how it fits the rest of your specific plan. The bonus tip says it all: say it out loud. Telling people you're planning to retire creates accountability. It makes the stone easier to push!   Key Topics: ●      Trying Out Retirement Destinations (04:24) ●      Home Repairs, Renovations, and Aging in Place (07:21) ●      Volunteering: A Test Drive for Your Time (12:02) ●      Reclaiming Your Calendar… and Your Identity (13:35) ●      Healthcare Costs, Medicare Myths, and HSAs (16:52) ●      Building a Social Network Outside the Office (21:04) ●      Checking In on Pensions and Old 401(k)s (25:30) ●      Why the 10-Year Mark Is the Right Time to Find a Financial Planner (27:21) ●      Social Security: "Wait" Is Not a One-Size-Fits-All Answer (29:33) ●      Creating Your Social Security Account (and Checking Your Earnings Record) (31:02) ●      Say It Out Loud (32:22)   Resources: Retirement Readiness Quiz: https://www.aarp.org/money/retirement/readiness-quiz/ The 5 Years Before You Retire and other books by Emily Guy Birken: https://www.emilyguybirken.com/books HerMoney.com Article Discussed in this Episode: https://hermoney.com/invest/10-things-you-should-do-when-retirement-is-10-years-away/   Take Back Retirement Episodes Referenced: Making Your Own Story: Finding Meaning After 50 with Diane Gansauer Redefining Retirement: Finding Your Creative Voice Through Comedy with Lynn Harris The Challenges and Opportunities of Defining Your Identity in Retirement with Elizabeth Parsons Practicing for Retirement: Balancing Creative Pursuits and Financial Planning with Mary Jo Hoffman Simplifying Medicare: What's Important For You To Know with Susan Sloan Cultivating Creative Connections for Lifelong Wellness with Claire Waite Brown Getting the Most from Social Security: Smart Strategies for Women with Heather Schreiber Smarter Social Security: Getting What's Yours Without Panicking   If you like what you've been hearing, we invite you to subscribe on your favorite platform and leave us a review. Tell us what you love about this episode! Or better yet, tell us what you want to hear more of in the future. stephanie@sofiafinancial.com   You can find the transcript and more information about this episode at www.takebackretirement.com.   Follow Stephanie on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.  Follow Kevin on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

If you're listening to this, there's a good chance you're a human being. (Although the speed at which AI is developing may be not all of you… A big hello to Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT (As Boris Johnson would say it) And, as a human being, you're attacked every day by emotions, fatigue, viruses and micro-managing bosses and demanding colleagues. You're not going to be able to stay consistent with your productivity systems and processes. (And even AI gets confused from time to time)  You WILL fall off the wagon from time to time As David Allen, of Getting Things Done (GTD), often emphasises, falling off the productivity "wagon" is normal and expected. His most famous quote on this topic is: “If you don't fall off the wagon regularly, you're not playing a big enough game.” So, what can you do when you do fall off? How can you quickly get back on track? Well, that's what we're going to look at today.  Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   Learn more and register for the Ultimate Productivity Workshop here.   Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 416 Hello, and welcome to episode 416 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.  One of the most common questions I get is what to do when your systems become neglected following a particularly busy period, a holiday, or illness or even plain, good old-fashioned laziness.  It happens to everyone from time to time, and it certainly doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you.  Yet it can leave you feeling that there's something lacking, that perhaps there's something wrong with you.  Of course, simply not true. There's nothing wrong with you at all. It's another sign that you are a functioning human being. (That's a good thing, by the way)  All that's happened is you got very busy and attended to the most important work that needed doing in that moment, or that you've just got back from holiday (vacation), and there's a lot of catching-up and cleaning up to do.  Both scenarios can leave you with some tidying up to do. That doesn't mean everything has failed. It just means there's some tidying up to do.  So, to get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question.  This week's question comes from Ernesto. Ernesto asks, Hi Carl, thank you for the Time Sector System. Finally, I have a system that works after many years of trying. My question is, what do you do when, for whatever reason, you fall off the wagon and let things slip? Is there a quick way to get back on track?  Hi Ernesto, thank you for your question.  Firstly, as I mentioned, this is perfectly normal. So many things can cause us to stop following our system, leaving us feeling anxious about everything that needs cleaning up.  The first place to start is by cleaning up your to-do list for today. This is what I call the business end of any task management system. Your today list.  With the exception of your inbox, all your other lists are just holding pens of tasks that you have processed and decided do not need doing today. Your inbox is where unprocessed tasks sit until you decide what to do with them.  So get your list of tasks for today cleaned up. Reschedule tasks that do not need to be done today, and delete or check off those that have been completed or are no longer needed.  This one step will clear the runway and give you a curated list of things that do need to be done today. One of the tricks I have to help me here is to give myself a few minutes each evening to clear this list. Anything I have not completed that day is either checked off if done, rescheduled if not, or deleted if no longer needed.  Doing this every day ensures it takes only a few minutes, and by the start of the new day, my today list is curated, accurate, and focused.  I'm reminded here of a story I learned from friend of this podcast, Simon Jeffries, a former UK special Forces officer, who mentioned that when he joined the Royal Marines, from day 1, the training instructors began teaching a simple habit that all marines live by: As Simon says, “the military doesn't take civilians and turn them into soldiers overnight. It can't. Day one of training, the standard is simple... Turn up on time. Keep your kit clean. Look after your rifle. That's it. A few weeks in, the expectations layer. Month after month, the load increases. The standards compound until discipline is second nature — under fatigue, under pressure, under fire.  Centuries of trial and error went into that approach. And the reason it works isn't complicated. You cannot expect discipline under fire unless it's second nature. And second nature requires progressive, consistent training.” Now I've often talked about the standards you set for yourself. That could always end the day with a clear plan for the next. It could also be to clear your today's to-do list so it's reset and ready for tomorrow.  Being consistent and making it a non-negotiable, no matter how tired you are, will soon embed this habit so it just becomes second nature.  The next list to clean up is your inbox. There's potential for something important and urgent to be missed here.  If you're like most people, you will be throwing a lot of things in there throughout the day. By the time you get to the end of the day, a lot of what you added will have been forgotten about.  It's this that makes keeping this list under control important.  The good news about your inbox is that while you will be adding important things in there, you're also likely to be adding things that, in hindsight, you do not need to do. These can be deleted. What remains can be processed using three simple questions:  What is it? A note, an event or a task. If it's a note, copy and paste it into your notes. If it's an event, such as an appointment, move it to your calendar.  For what remains, ask yourself: What do I need to do with it? This is about making sure the task is written clearly, so it's clear what you need to do.  And finally, ask, “When will I do it?” That will guide you where to put it now that you have processed it.  Is it something that needs to be done this week, or can it wait until next week, etc.?  If it needs to be done this week, you will again ask the question: when? When will you do it?  Beyond that, everything else can wait until your next weekly planning session.  One of the side benefits of the Time Sector System is that you will find many of the tasks you postpone to next week, this month, or next month will sort themselves out and can be deleted. This is one of my favourite aspects of the Time Sector System, the natural elimination of low-value tasks.  It's worth mentioning a couple of tips David Allen, yes, the Getting Things Done David Allen, gave me when we met in Seoul a few years ago.  David had been travelling through Asia for around ten days, and I asked him how he stayed on top of everything while he was away on business trips.  He said that the most important thing to stay on top while travelling was communications. Emails will back up very fast if you're not dedicating some time each day to clearing them.  Even if all you can find is 20 minutes in the morning before your day begins, take it. One missed day of managing this beast, and you're going to have to find twice as much time tomorrow, and so on.  The second tip is to block off at least half a day when you return to catch up. Process your inbox and clear or reschedule any overdue tasks.  David Allen blocks a whole day if he's been away for a week or more. Half a day if it's less than a week.  Treat this day as an extra day of your trip. Nobody knows you're back. You quietly get on and catch up with everything you have collected while you were away.  I adopted both these tips for all my travels, and they work.  If you don't do this, you'll be spending the next two to three weeks trying to catch up while getting on with your regular work.  Think of it this way: if your regular work naturally takes up your full working day, why do you think adding in a load of catching up will be easily absorbed? It won't.  Make the time for it.  Think of the end of each day only happens when you have done a reset and got yourself ready for the new day. I will add that I also have a closing-down routine that involves washing any remaining dishes, brushing my teeth, locking all the doors, and closing the terrace curtains. It takes less than five minutes, but it's now something I automatically do before going to bed.  It doesn't require any extra energy or thought. It just happens.  Doing the daily reset should also be automatic. I remember when I first entered the workplace as a young twenty-year-old and seeing how all my colleagues used to tidy up their desks before going home.  Nobody would ever dream of leaving papers, pens, pencils and files all over the place. They were tidied up, and that marked the end of the day.  Funnily enough, as I think about it, I still do that today. My work day is not complete until I have a tidy desk and my task list is reset and ready to go for tomorrow.  Less than five minutes, and all reset and ready to go.  That's how you guard against falling off the wagon. Having a few small habits to ensure you clean up at the end of each day.  I know it's human nature to overthink things, but if you stop and consider what's really important, knowing where you need to be tomorrow morning and what your most important tasks are for the day is all you really need to get yourself back on track.  And one of those important tasks could be to catch up and clear your inboxes, if that is where many of your current issues are. You get to choose. But do make that choice. Don't ignore it and make the excuse that you are tired.  It's less than five minutes. Come on, you can do that.  Many of the concepts I've talked about here and much more will be a part of next week's live Ultimate Productivity Workshop. 2 sessions, 2 hours each over two Fridays (or Saturdays if you are in Australia or Asia)  There are some places left if you want to join us.  This workshop has helped hundreds of people finally gain control of their time and build a system that prevents backlogs and keeps them from falling off the wagon.  And, given that it's live, you have the chance to share your own experiences, learn from others and ask questions.  There are a lot of exciting lessons in this workshop. I do hope you can join me and let me help you finally make time for the things you want time for.  I will include the link where you can learn more and register for the show in the show notes. Thank you, Ernesto, for your question, and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

Never Alone in Every Season  • “Your time will come.”  • Your Time will Come: I say this phrase and my girls’ faces cringe.   They HATE when I say this because they don’t like to wait.  • Honestly, I don't either. Waiting is uncomfortable.  • We live in a culture that resists waiting and demands immediate   fulfillment. (McDonalds has […]

Struggling with rejection in sales? You're not alone—and more importantly, you're not doing it wrong. In this episode of It's Your Time, Certified Life Coach Michelle Arnold Bourque breaks down the neuroscience of rejection and why it feels so personal—especially for women in sales and high-performance roles. Here's the truth: your brain processes rejection the same way it processes physical pain. That tight chest, sinking feeling, or emotional spiral after a "no"? It's biological—not a sign that you're too sensitive or not cut out for sales. But here's where your power begins. You'll learn how to stop turning rejection into a confidence killer—and instead use it as a strategic advantage. ✨ In this episode, you'll discover: Why rejection triggers real pain in the brain (and what that means for your performance) The "90-second rule" that helps you recover faster from a sales rejection How to stop overthinking and shorten rumination cycles The key mindset shift that separates top performers from those who stay stuck How to detach your self-worth from your sales results Why every "no" is actually valuable data for growth If you've ever replayed a sales call for hours, questioned your abilities after a rejection, or felt emotionally drained from putting yourself out there—this episode will change how you approach every "no" moving forward. It's time to stop taking rejection personally and start using it powerfully.

What are your priorities today? What about tomorrow? Do you even know?  This week, I'm sharing a simple switch you can make that will make prioritising your work almost automatic… Almost.   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   What is Time-Based Productivity? Learn more and register for the Ultimate Productivity Workshop here.   Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 415 Hello, and welcome to episode 415 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 do you decide what to do and when? Do you operate a FIFO methodology (First In, First Out) or is it something more nuanced than that?  I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that almost everyone has too much to do and too little time to do it. That's perhaps the reason you are listening to this podcast.  It's further complicated by the scope of what we are asked to do. Today, we have Slack or Teams messages that somehow cut through our defences and turn into long, time-consuming “chats” about a minor issue on a project that isn't due to be completed for another six months, preventing us from doing the rather more important work we had planned to do that day.  Then there is email, treated slightly less urgently than instant messages, but it can again destroy our focus, leaving us distracted and unable to finish the work we need or want to complete.  Every day is a challenge. What to do, what is the most urgent, and what is the most important thing you can do today? And if you can work on the most important thing, will you have enough time to do it? If not, would it be better to do something else?  Agh! It's enough to drive anyone around the bend. And it's not isolated. Every day we have to go through the same decision-making process. It's exhausting and stressful (Is this the right thing to work on, or should I respond to that email I just received from my colleague?) and can lead to a prioritisation freeze and activity addiction, where looking busy is more important than doing work that matters. This week's question is about ideas for solving these challenges, so to get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question.  This week's question comes from Benjamin. Benjamin asks, What are your thoughts on organising work into categorised FIFO-style lists, adjusted for priority, and then using time blocks to work through them without expecting every block to result in a fully completed task unless there's a real deadline attached. Hi Benjamin, thank you for your question.  I think you are on the right lines with your ideas there.  Let me give you an example of this working.  I teach a method called Inbox Zero 2.0 for managing emails. This method has two parts. The first is to clear the inbox. This is about speed, and all you are doing is filtering out the informational emails that don't need any action, except to archive them and moving any actionable emails to a folder called “Action This Day”. Later in the day, you go into that folder and try to clear it.  Now, the ‘secret sauce' of this method is that the emails in your Action This Day folder are in reverse order. The oldest ones are at the top, and the newest ones are at the bottom of the list.  (You can do this from the folders' settings in Outlook and Apple Mail. I've never been able to find a way to do this in Gmail)  This means, when you come to ‘clear' the Action This Day folder, you start at the top and work your way down. You try to clear it every day, but often that's not possible; sometimes there are too many in there.  However, because you start with the oldest, the remaining emails, the ones you were unable to get to, will likely have only recently come in, so the urgency is less than the ones you did respond to.  Now, occasionally, an email that recently came in needs to be responded to that day. Here, you would “adjust for priority”, as you aptly call it, Benjamin and respond to these out of their natural order.  It's a system that has worked for years, never letting me down. Because I spend at least 20 minutes a day on my actionable emails, my emails rarely back up; my inbox is cleared every day, and nobody needs to wait more than 24 hours for a response.  Now, you mentioned doing as much work as you can within the time blocks you set. That is exactly how to do it.  This is also where many people go wrong with time blocking. Time blocking isn't about squeezing in a specific amount of work within the time you have set. That's never going to be possible.  You see, there are too many variables acting on us each day. The first is that you have no idea what emergencies will happen in the middle of a time block.  I've worked in offices where I settle down to write an important contract only to be interrupted by a fire alarm that took more than an hour to have the building declared safe. Rare, but does happen.  More common are the interruptions from our colleagues. We just do not know for sure that something more urgent will pop up when we are trying to complete a planned piece of work.  However, that does not mean time blocking doesn't work. It does.  It does because it allows us to organise our days by what matters most.  For example, if you are a lawyer who needs time each day to prepare or review contracts, blocking two hours each day for this work ensures you always have time to do this important work.  Blocking time for it means no one in your office can steal that time from you. It's like you have an appointment with yourself each day to do your most important work.  If you do not, for whatever reason, complete as much as you would have liked to, it's okay, because you can pick it up again in your next blocked time slot.  This is more about consistency than time blocking. If you consistently turn up and do the work, you're never going to be far behind and are unlikely to have any significant backlogs.  Yet if you don't protect your time, it'll be stolen.  Not blocking time for doing your most important work is like parking your car in a high-crime area and leaving your wallet on the passenger seat with the windows wide open. There's a good chance your wallet won't be there when you get back to your car.  Time blocking gets a bad reputation because people erroneously think it's about blocking your entire day with activities. No. That's not time blocking. That's masochism.  Time blocking your whole day wouldn't work anyway. A traffic jam, a distraught colleague, a micromanaging boss, or a fire alarm would ruin your day, and then you'd waste time trying to reschedule everything. Time booking works when you use it lightly.  Look at it this way: You build each day around a few critical blocks of time. For instance, two hours of deep solo work where you get on and write the reports, prepare the presentation, or sort out an issue that's been dragging on for weeks.  Then there's likely to be time required for responding to all the messages you get each day. I doubt anyone can escape that deluge, but ignoring it will just create bigger and bigger problems further down the line.  So perhaps you set aside an hour for dealing with your communications and any low-value admin. (Another area that can backlog pretty quickly if you're not staying on top of it.) That's just two blocks, consisting of a total of three hours. Yet it's three hours, which, if followed consistently, would keep you on top of your critical work and prevent backlogs in the areas most susceptible to them.  Three hours that would reduce your stress, lower your anxiety, and put you ahead of 97% of your colleagues. This does not guarantee you will always be on top of your work. As Baz Luhrmann's 1990s hit says:  “Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind… the race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself.” But what will guarantee you stay ahead is being consistent with it.  When you start each day, ask yourself: where's my focus time and where's my comms and admin time?  You mentioned categorising your tasks, and that's a great idea too, Benjamin. Not all work is equal, and sometimes a deadline will need us to adjust our priorities.  Now, categorising your work can be a minefield if you are inclined to overcomplicate things. This should be avoided.  Think of it this way: When a pilot prepares for a trans-Pacific flight, there are just three categories. Pre-flight, in-flight and landing.  Each of those categories has distinct types of tasks to be completed.  For us, knowledge workers, it really comes down to a few simple categories. For example, there are four that almost everyone will have (including airline pilots): Communications Admin Planning  And chores Chores are always there. We all occasionally have to pick up a prescription, make a dentist's or doctor's appointment or take our kids to ballet, football or cricket practice.  Beyond these four, it will depend on the kind of work you do. A lecturer at a university may have student affairs, lectures and research as categories.  A salesperson may have prospecting, follow-ups and proposal writing. My advice is to keep your categories to no more than eight and make them as general as possible.  For example, with the lecturer, student affairs could include grading papers, setting exams, writing references and arranging for one or more of your students to participate in a work experience programme.  Once you have your categories, you have a way to prioritise your work.  Again, this will depend on your work. For me, my most important priority each day is my content category. I create content every day. It could be this podcast, a blog post or a YouTube video.  For a salesperson, the most important category may be prospecting, because without a steady supply of potential customers, everything else will eventually dry up.  This now helps you with what you will do in your time blocks. For me, 9:30 am to 11:30 am is my content creation time. It is blocked on my calendar, and everyone knows not to disturb me during that time—including my wife!  The salesperson may choose 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm as their prospecting time, and that, again, would be protected as a time block on their calendar each day.  The idea is to match your most important categories with time blocks on your calendar.  This is how time-based productivity works. It works on the time available to do your work. Not everything has to be done today or even this week or month.  When you're processing your work inbox, you decide what you need to do with something, then choose the best time to do it.  There will be other factors to take into account, such as the deadline, who's asking you to do something and so on. But ultimately, you are deciding when to work on a particular category.  This is the opposite of the more traditional task-based systems that treat every task as individually important and as something that must be done ASAP.  That way is unsustainable, as I am sure many of you have found out. It creates huge lists of stuff that may or may not need to be done, which just overwhelms you. You cannot do everything at once or even this week.  If you want to learn more about time-based productivity, I have added a link to a blog post I wrote about it in the show notes.  And just a heads up. The next Ultimate Productivity Workshop is coming soon. On Fridays the 15 and 22nd May, 2 sessions, 2 hours each over two weeks.  If your calendar is swamped with meetings and commitments, that leaves you with no room to do the work these meetings are generating. If you find your inboxes are overflowing with tasks and messages, and you cannot see a way out of it all, then this is the workshop for you This workshop will teach you, in a live setting, how to move from an unsustainable, task-based system to a more sustainable, time-based one, along with many other lessons to help you get control of your calendar and all those inboxes.  I will put the details in the show notes so you can learn more about how this workshop will help you. (Oh, and a warning, be prepared for some homework if you join us)  I do hope you will be able to join me.  Thank you, Benjamin, for your question. I hope this has been helpful.  And thank you to you, too, for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

Podcast 414 "Organisation is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up. But if you spend all your time organising, you never do the 'something'." That's a paraphrase of a quote from A. A. Milne and his book The House at Pooh Corner. And touches on the question I'm asking this week.  Let's go,    Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   Learn more about the Time Sector System  Take the Time Sector System Course   Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 414 Hello, and welcome to episode 414 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 do you organise your work?  There was a trend a few years ago to organise our tasks in multiple different ways. There were the original Getting Things Done contexts: @office, @home, @phone, @computer, etc.  Some preferred to manage their tasks by project, creating long lists of projects and assigning tasks to them.  Most of these trends died out because, ultimately, they were just new ways of avoiding the work while still feeling that the work was getting done. A kind of modern-day equivalent of shuffling papers on your desk.  All these trends did was create a longer list of lists, full of spurious tasks that likely didn't need to be done or had already been done but not checked off.  Then there is the idea that we can organise tasks by how much energy we estimate a task will consume. This one still persists, and I will explain shortly why this one doesn't work. Yet there is one way to manage your tasks that has been around for well over a hundred years and still works, one that almost all top-level executives use, but given that it is simple and we humans love to overcomplicate things, it never seems to get much coverage.  Anyway, this is what this week's topic is all about, so to get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question.  This week's question comes from Ken. Ken asks, Hi Carl, what do you think is the best way to organise tasks? I'm thinking about using energy levels to keep my lists low. Have you had any experience with this method? Hi Ken, Thank you for your question.  I have to confess that over the years, I have jumped on every trend for organising my lists of tasks. And, except for two methods, pretty much all fail.  They fail for the reasons I alluded to a moment ago. They are too complicated and require far too much maintenance to keep organised. You see, the methods that work are simple, and therefore, in today's world, they are not sexy.  The simplest of them all is one I personally have gravitated back to in recent years. That is a simple daily list of tasks to be done today. These are taken from a master list, which is organised during the weekly planning session into the days you plan to do them on.  This method has a built-in safety valve. You can see how many tasks you have allocated to a specific day, and if it looks unrealistic, you can move them to other days to balance out your week.  Given that you are looking at this daily list every day during the Daily Planning Sequence, it can be adjusted for any unknowns that suddenly arise as the week progresses. (Which of course always happens) To maintain this method, all you need is two to three minutes a day and around thirty minutes for your weekly planning.  Not exciting, sexy or newsworthy. It doesn't require expensive apps or AI. You can operate this method using a simple $1.00 notebook or a text file on your computer.  But it works. It's flexible, and as long as you are being sensible, you're never going to feel overwhelmed.  This is where other methods go wrong. They often involve a lot of organising, and given that you are not always looking at the lists you are creating, you have no idea what kind of monster is growing.  Take organising by projects as an example. I don't know where this comes from. It certainly doesn't come from David Allen's Getting Things Done. GTD, as it is called, organises lists by what David Allen calls “Contexts”.  Contexts are created around tools, places or people. For instance, if a task requires a computer to complete it, you would assign it to the @Computer list. If you need to talk to your partner about something, you would add it to your @Partner list, and if you can only complete the task at home, you would add it to your @Home list.  The danger with this kind of organising is twofold. First, some of your lists will become enormous. So big that you don't want to look at them, as they become scary and leave you feeling anxious. And second, some tasks could theoretically fall into two or more lists. For example, if you need to book flights for a trip with your partner, you could allocate it to your @computer list or your @Partner list, and, as you will likely do this at home with your partner, it could conceivably be placed in your @Home list.  So where do you put it?  So you create a Project called “Family trip to Jamaica” and place the book flights task in there. Excellent. Next, you may add “Book hotel” and then maybe add a packing list and places to visit. Soon, a simple “project” has an array of tasks, some of which need to be done before you go and others when you get there.  That isn't really the problem. The problem is you don't have a single project like that. You may end up with projects like buying a new car, redecorating your living room, and, not to mention, all the various projects you will have at work.  Soon, that project list is out of control.  Just maintaining it and reviewing what needs to be done next takes hours.  And let's be honest here, how many of you are willing to consistently spend two or three hours of your weekend reviewing all your projects?  For something like your trip, it would be far easier to create a note in your notes app. Here you can keep your flight tickets, hotel reservation confirmation, packing list and places to visit in one place and have a master checklist for everything you need to do.  In your task manager, all you need now is a single task reminding you to book your flights, or simply to look at what needs doing next on your checklist.  Now you mentioned managing your list by energy levels, Ken.  On the surface, this sounds like a great idea. After all, why would you tackle a task that will require a lot of energy when you are not feeling energetic?  And when you are feeling low on energy, you can clear off some of those low-energy tasks.  Hmmm, but does it work? Well, no.  For one thing, your energy levels are not consistent. Some days you feel on fire, and others you feel like you've been hit by a bus and dragged through a hedge backwards.  The trouble is, when you go to bed, you have no idea how you will feel the next day.  Then there is the issue of deadlines. Whether you feel like doing a task or not, if the deadline is 12 pm today, you've got to finish it, no matter how energetic you feel.  Then there's the human factor. We are wired to be lazy. This comes from the days when we lived on the Savannah. Food was scarce, and we needed to conserve our energy for hunting food.  Then there were the winters when finding food was even harder. Only fatter people would survive winters because we needed to live largely on our fat deposits when we were unable to find food.  This is why it's easy to gain weight and much harder to lose it. Our body wants to store fat. It does not want to let it go.  While we consciously know food is not scarce for most of us today, our lizard brain doesn't know that. And our lizard brain controls our survival instincts, so it will override our conscious intelligence.  This means when we are feeling low on energy, the last thing we will do is open up our task managers and pick something to do.  Instead, we'll crash on the sofa or take a nap.  And so your low-energy list will keep growing.  Then there comes the question of how to define a medium-energy task. What does that mean?  It's likely you will define those tasks differently depending on how you feel on the day you process them.  The second way to organise your tasks that actually works is to go by when a task needs to be done.  Let's go back to the flight example. If you are planning your trip for September and want to get everything booked by the end of June, the window to complete that task is from now through to the end of June.  Given that you want to do this with your partner, it's likely you will do this task when you are with your partner.  If you are away on a ten-day business trip this week and next, you cannot do the task then, so don't put it on your list for this week or next.  As we are about to start May, I would add this task to my Next Month list. I don't need to do it now, but it will need to be on my list in June.  Hopefully, you are familiar with the Time Sector System. This organises your lists by when you will do them.  The only list in play each week is your This Week list. This contains all the tasks you have decided need to be done this week. Everything else is in either your Next Week, This Month, Next Month or long-term and on-hold lists.  Each week, you look at these lists and decide what to bring forward to your This Week list.  The simplicity of this method is that when you process your inbox, you are asking three simple questions: What is it? - Is it a task, an event, or a note? What do I need to do to complete it?  And, when will I do it?  In a very short time, you get super fast at processing your tasks, and with the exception of your long-term and on-hold list, none of your lists will grow out of control. Well, not if you give yourself about 30 minutes each week to maintain and update your lists.  Given that you are working from a single list, your This Week list, once again, you have the built-in safety valve because you can see how many tasks are on your list before the week begins and can adjust it to be more realistic if it becomes too large. The purpose of your long-term and on-hold list is to eliminate, not accumulate. In other words, every month or so, you go in there and delete tasks you no longer want or need to do.  To learn more about the Time Sector System, I have a course that will teach you how to use it as well as a comprehensive blog post explaining why this method works so well in today's world.  I will put links to both in the show notes for you.  So there you go, Ken. There are always new, exciting ways to organise your tasks, but ultimately it comes down to what needs to be done today. That's all that matters at the work level of managing our tasks.  Things that don't need to be done today should never be on your daily list.  Your energy levels will fluctuate throughout the day; it's not something you can control. Energy levels can be affected by the quality and quantity of your sleep, what you ate for lunch and whether you are coming down with a cold or the flu.  What you can control is what you do right now. You could take a nap, go for a walk or sit down and attack that list of prospects that you've been meaning to contact for the last three weeks.  My advice would be to work with what you have direct control over, and that ultimately comes down to when you will do something.  I hope that has helped Ken. Thank you for your question.  And thank you to you, too, for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

On today's episode of In Time, Peter and Robyne reflect on the power of clear communication, emotional awareness, and what it means to show up for others when things feel heavy. What does it look like to be “clear and kind” at the same time? How does our capacity to respond - rather than react - shift when we're tired or under-resourced? And when someone we care about is struggling, where do we begin if we don't know how to help? Plus, a lighthearted game, a moment of honesty about what's weighing on them, and an update on what's next for In Time.Follow Peter and Robyne on social media:Peter Katz: Facebook: @peterkatzmusic | Instagram: @peterkatzmusic | LinkedIn: Peter KatzDr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe: Twitter: @dr_robynehd | Instagram: @dr_robynehd | LinkedIn: drrobynehdLearn more about Peter & Robyne's digital course, Your Time.2026 © All Rights Reserved.

“I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether.” I've been reading Dorothy L Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels. Set in the 1920s and 30s, the stories feature an aristocratic private detective in a style similar to Sherlock Holmes. And that quote comes from Lord Peter Wimsey himself. In this week's episode, I share some of the productivity methods these fictional characters followed, as well as some from the biographies of these authors. Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Get the Designing The Perfect Retirement Programme Interview with Harvey Smith Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 413 Hello, and welcome to episode 413 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.  1920s and 30s England was an interesting time. The country was changing. The First World War broke down many of the class barriers that existed before the war, and while many manual labour jobs remained brutal, conditions were slowly improving.  The way people lived their lives was also changing. There was more leisure time, and cars were becoming more common, giving people more freedom to travel, certainly at weekends.  And yet, with all these changes, there were still some customs and habits people followed that gave them structure and balance. They also used nature far more than we do today. Lives were much simpler; heart attacks and cancer were rare; there was little waste; and recycling was part of life.  It could be asked, what went wrong? I began this episode with a quote from the character Lord Peter Wimsey.  Lord Peter was very much in the style of Sherlock Holmes, and throughout the novels, many of Lord Peter's friends would often accuse him of being “Sherlockian”.  What I noticed about these characters was that in the 1920s and 30s, some customs helped people avoid procrastination.  You can also see these in play in the Downton Abbey and Jeeves and Wooster TV series as well. The first productivity method you will see is that days were structured around meal times. Breakfast was informal, and people ate when they were ready. However, lunch was always a proper meal, not a quick snack taken at a desk. It would have been unthinkable not to take the one-hour lunch break.  Even manual workers would stop for lunch and eat together.  Taking a proper lunch break can do wonders for your productivity. First, it gives you a break from doing tasks, and it should always be eaten with other people.  But the biggest impact on your productivity was having a natural deadline. Because you were dining with others, you had to stop at the right time. No, “I'll just finish this and take a quick lunch break”.  It was down your tools and go out.  This gave you a hard deadline to finish what needed to be finished before lunch. And when you have a hard deadline, Parkinson's law comes in. This is “work fills the time available” If you have two hours to finish a task, it will take you two hours. If you only have an hour, it will take you an hour. What happens is that you enter a deeper state of focus when you are under time pressure. That's how Parkinson's law works. But it can have the reverse effect.  If an email would normally take you 30 minutes to respond to, but you have an hour before your next appointment, that email will take you the full hour to write.  This is why procrastination is now a thing; in the 1920s and 30s, it was rare. The natural mealtime deadlines prevented a lot of procrastination. Today, those mealtimes are woolly and ill-defined, removing a natural deadline, causing you to procrastinate.  What people ate also had an impact. It was largely fish or meat with vegetables. No HPFs (highly processed foods) or low-value carbs. It was foods that didn't mess with your blood sugar, which leads to the afternoon slump. Alcohol was often also included. How on earth deep focused work got done in the afternoons, I don't know.  Dinner was an altogether different affair. The time was set, and you dressed for dinner too. The ladies wore evening gowns, and the gentlemen wore dinner suits (tuxedo for those of you living on the other side of the Atlantic).  This meant if you did have a job and were not of “independent means”, you had to leave work on time to be home in time to dress for dinner.  After dinner was interesting. The ladies would gather together in the drawing room for music and conversation. The gentlemen would retire to the smoking room for brandy, coffee and cigars. There, the day's business was often discussed.  This was the aristocracy, not the middle or working classes. Although even the lower classes treated dinner more formally than we do today. It was the family meal of the day, and everyone was expected to be there.  After that, people often wrote letters, read books, or, in the case of people like Winston Churchill, went back to their studies and did some more work.  And that was something I have noticed. Because there were no fixed working hours for the upper classes, work occurred at all hours of the day. A lot of work happened after dinner, rarely in the early hours of the day.  This gave a lot more flexibility for things like admin and communications. Most letter writing was done late in the day. The founder of the British Intelligence Service (MI6), Sir Mansfield Cumming, would retire to his study after dinner to read through all the papers he'd received that day and send out letters to his agents around the world, often until 2 in the morning.  Yet Cumming was famous for two to three-hour lunches and late starts to the day.  The problems we have today are caused by on-demand entertainment. There's always something to watch on YouTube or Netflix. And our sofas are very tempting after a nice dinner.  Once there, it's a real challenge to get up. Take those temptations away, and what else will you do?  If you think about that for a moment. If a family had dinner together at 7:00 pm, discussed the day, and afterwards joined in an activity, they would be spending quality time together every day.  Then at 9:00 pm, you could go back and clean up your messages, clear any admin tasks for an hour or so and still have time for reading or a hobby.  It's often our fixation with work-life balance that puts unnecessary barriers in our day. No personal stuff during office hours and no work stuff in our personal time.  And yet, what do we do in our personal time? Spend hours in front of a screen, not talking with our family or friends, instead sending WhatsApp messages and commenting on social media posts.  Cal Newport and Tim Ferriss write their books late in the evening. In Cal Newport's case, he spends time with his young family until they go to bed, and then goes to his home office and writes for two or three hours.  Cal Newport is a good example because he's completely rejected social media, so he has time to write after his kids have gone to bed.  Rest was taken very seriously in the 1920s and 30s. A lot of it was social. Parties and weekend getaways.  I've spoken about Ian Fleming's work habits before, particularly when he was in Jamaica writing the next James Bond book. But when he was back in London, he still worked in very much the same way.  Mornings were intensely focused work, followed by a long lunch, then letters, and then home for dinner, or out with a friend. Afterwards, he would go to his study and edit a manuscript or read through the papers he'd received from his foreign correspondents around the world. (He was the foreign news editor at The Sunday Times Newspaper) The most noticeable thing I learned from this era has been to structure your days around meal times. I now do intense creative work in the mornings, followed by more leisurely afternoons, and then, after dinner, go back to doing some work for an hour or two.  I still work for around eight to ten hours a day, but I find that my energy levels remain strong whenever I am working. There are plenty of breaks throughout the day where I can socialise, spend time with my family and still get a lot of work done.  And then there was movement. A lot of movement.  The 1920s and 30s were a lot less convenient than they are today. This meant we had to walk a lot more than we do now.  Weirdly, people have become obsessed with their step count today. They struggle to get even 8,000 steps in. And gyms are everywhere. There were no gyms, and nobody was counting steps back then. They didn't have to. It was natural to walk 10,000+ steps every day. If you wanted food, you had to prepare it; there was no app to order it.  Although the upper classes did have servants who could produce it for them when necessary. But given that refrigerators and microwaves were not a thing then, a sudden order of food would have resulted in a cold meat salad and not much else. As an aside, just do a search for 1950s New York or London and look at the images. There's a significant difference between the size of people then and people today. Yet, no gyms, no smartwatches calculating steps, sleep cycles, or anything else.  It was purely natural. Real food, not processed rubbish, plenty of natural movement, and no gyms.  If you want to be more productive every day, move more. This is really what balance is all about. The so-called work-life balance is a modern concept, but what really matters at life level is the movement-rest balance.  With the right movement-rest balance, your productivity will naturally increase. You will be a lot less mentally tired, and when you do move, you can map out what you will do next.  I find that the biggest benefit of working from home has been that I can get up between work sessions to do the laundry or take Louis out for his walk. It gives me a natural mental break, and I do something physical. That refreshes my brain, and I can come back and do some more mental work feeling energised.  I know it will be impossible to turn back the clock and go back to living the way people did in the 1920s. Technology and cultural changes would make that impossible.  However, there are things we can do, as people did back then, that will naturally increase our productivity.  First, focus on the rest-movement balance. If you're mentally tired, do something physical instead of collapsing on the sofa. If you're physically tired, do something mental.  And move more than you currently do. We have become alarmingly sedate today. Dance while you're cooking or making tea or coffee (I do that hahaha) Eat real food, not processed rubbish, and take proper lunch breaks. Get out, move and socialise if you can. Treat them as a non-negotiable.  Be relaxed about work-life balance. It's not natural. There will be times when the best thing you can do is to clear some backlogs in the evening, and equally, there are times when the best thing you can do at 3:00 pm is go out for a walk or hang out the washing.  Another aside. The worst invention has been the tumble dryer. Before we had them, we had to hang out the washing. This involved bending down to pick up clothes from the washing basket and then reaching up to hang them on the line. Possible one of the best workouts you would ever get.  I know today's episode has been different. I hope you've found it interesting. It's well worth reading some of these older novels to learn how people used to live their lives.  Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very active, yet productive week.   

On today's episode of In Time, Peter and Robyne reflect on what happens when life gets fuller, but not always more aligned with what we love. What shifts when we stop asking “How can I do this?” and start asking “Who can help?” How do we create environments that make overwhelming tasks feel more manageable? And what might change if we checked in with ourselves first - starting with what brings us joy before tackling what feels heavy? Plus, a reminder that we weren't meant to just consume, but to create and connect, and share the load along the way.Follow Peter and Robyne on social media:Peter Katz: Facebook: @peterkatzmusic | Instagram: @peterkatzmusic | LinkedIn: Peter KatzDr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe: Twitter: @dr_robynehd | Instagram: @dr_robynehd | LinkedIn: drrobynehdLearn more about Peter & Robyne's digital course, Your Time.2026 © All Rights Reserved.

Podcast 412 Continuing my series on designing the “perfect” retirement, this week, I share some insights on one of the most common fears of retirement, that of losing your purpose.  Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   Get the Designing The Perfect Retirement Programme   Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 411 Hello, and welcome to episode 412 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.  Throughout our lives, there is usually some goal or purpose we are attempting to achieve.  When at school, it's to pass our exams so we can go on to university or to get a job in a specific field. When we begin our careers, we are often driven to work hard to get promoted. Or at least that's how the theory goes.  The trouble is, if you step back from these “goals”, they seem to be pushed onto us by our parents, society and our peers.  It's rare for anyone to step away from this blueprinted path and set their own course. In the past, people who did not follow the well-worn path would have been politely described as “eccentric”, or impolitely “weird”.  I remember back in 2002, when I quit law and flew to Korea to teach English, my friends and colleagues could not understand why I would give up a career in law to teach English.  Yet, my heart was not in law. It always felt wrong. If I am being honest, I believe my motivation for studying law and working in a law firm was purely about status and about living a life that other people wanted me to live. Coming to Korea turned out to be the best thing I've ever done. I discovered my purpose: to help other people, and I found the medium through which I could do that: teaching.  It's what I still do today. I help people through teaching.  In our working lives, it's easy to have a purpose. It might not be our true purpose, but climbing the promotion ladder does seem to give us a purpose. How high up the ladder can we climb?  Yet, chasing the next promotion is never going to be a life's purpose. It might be a career goal, but ultimately, it will end at some point, and that ending point will unlikely be within your control.  I'm reminded of one of England's top lawyers, Lord Jonathan Sumption.  Lord Sumption was a celebrated barrister, rising to the top of the legal profession when he became a judge at the Supreme Court.  The mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court judges in England is 70, so when Lord Sumption turned 70, he retired from the legal profession.  However, his real passion was never for law. That was his career, and he was very good at it. His real passion was for medieval history, and today Lord Sumption is regarded as one of the leading historians of that era. He continues to write books and talk on the subject.  Tony Robbins talks about the six human needs in his brilliant Unleash the Power Within seminar. These human needs are:  The need for: Certainty - the certainty that you can avoid pain and gain pleasure, and the need for uncertainty and variety - the need for the unknown and new stimuli.  The need for significance - the feeling of being unique, important, special or needed and then the need for connection and love - a strong feeling of closeness to someone or something  And then there are the two areas that when we are young, we often dismiss, largely because we are so caught up in our own lives. They are the need to contribute and the need to grow.  When I first did the associated exercise related to these needs, I did just that. My top two were the need for certainty and the need for significance. (Typical for someone who creates content, funnily enough) I dismissed the needs to contribute and grow. Yet now, I see that these two needs are the source of our purpose.  All living beings need to grow. When we stop growing, we start dying. Just look at what happens to muscles when we stop using them. They weaken and whither. That's your body doing its job. It wants to conserve energy, and if you're not using an energy-expensive muscle, it will weaken the muscle.  That is just another reason it's important to make sure you do your resistance training every day. (Or at least three to four times a week). Yet growth is not just about the physical; it's also about the mental. The need to be continuously learning.  This is where our hobbies come in. Hobbies such as learning languages, geology, car mechanics, medieval history, and problem-solving keep our brains active. Our brains continue to grow as we learn.  A good reason not to try to figure everything out by using customer service or Chat GPT. Use your problem-solving skills to figure it out.  And the contribution is where we get our sense of fulfilment. Passing on our knowledge and what we have learned from our life experiences by teaching others.  When I worked in law, it always felt like it was just about billable time. How much could we charge the client? I tried to convince myself that I was helping people, but my bosses were not interested in that part. They just wanted to know how much I had billed that week.  When I began teaching English to adults in Korea, that changed. It did not matter how many students I had in my classes. I got paid the same. Now I felt I was contributing to someone's success.  Something changed in me, too. I felt excited to go to work every morning. I'd never felt that before, and it took me a while to figure out what that was. It was because each day I got the chance to help people improve their lives and career prospects, and it was a joy to see their progress.  If you were to build a retirement around growth and contribution, you would soon find that your purpose becomes clear.  For most of us, our purpose is unlikely to be as grand as bringing world peace or finding a solution to global warming. For some, maybe, but for most of us, not likely.  Purpose is often much smaller than that. It could be to raise and support your children so they can navigate through their worlds with positivity and pragmatism. For others, it could be, like me, to teach as many people as I can to be better organised and less stressed.  The late Prince Philip, who died five years ago, told his daughter, Princess Anne, that to find your purpose, you should find something that you feel you can make an impact on.  For Prince Philip, that meant conserving and protecting the planet, as well as helping young people be active through his Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme.  He was talking about conservation and climate change in the 1950s, well before it became fashionable to do so. He was a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund, wrote multiple books on the subject, and was active in climate science. For Princess Anne, it has been, and remains so today, saving children in war-torn environments, animal welfare and hearing dogs for the deaf.  Which then leads us to the second problem here.  When we retire, it can be very tempting to fill our calendars with all sorts of work in the name of good causes. Don't do that.  You are not going to be able to have an impact on everything. Instead, you want to look at what you are genuinely interested in.  Prince Philip gave a 19-year-old Princess Anne some sage advice when she asked him what she should get involved in. He told her that she would be inundated with offers to be a patron of this or that. He advised her that she could never be a patron of everything, so she should choose those in which she had a genuine interest.  Ron Dennis, the former owner of the McLaren Formula 1 team, retired from Formula 1 in 2017 and dedicated his retirement to helping young people achieve their aspirations and to become role models for future generations.  His experience of working with people like Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and Kimi Räikkönen gave him the knowledge and experience to help young sportsmen and women achieve their dreams.  There's likely to be something that you have an interest in. If that can be coupled with your knowledge and experience, then you have something you can contribute, and that, in turn, will give you a sense of purpose.  In many ways, the challenge is not about finding purpose; it is narrowing it down to the one or two things that we feel we can have an impact on.  The same challenge we faced when in the corporate world is still there in retirement: overcommitting. This is why it's important not to rush into things when you transition. Explore, think, test, and experience by all means, but set a deadline for refining your activities into something more manageable.  One of the wonderful things about the world we live in today is that we can share our ideas and experiences by writing a blog, recording a podcast, or even starting a YouTube channel.  The great thing about these avenues is that they need consistency to grow. A weekly podcast does far better than a podcast that rarely adds episodes. This helps you to bring structure into your weeks. You can set aside a day or two each week for your content production.  As your blog, podcast, or YouTube channel grows, that in itself gives you a sense of purpose, particularly if it is contributing to making an impact on something you have an interest in.  So, if you are struggling to find your purpose, first, don't overthink it. It's rarely about solving the world's problems; it's more about helping people to better themselves, and as someone with the experience you have, you are in a very strong position to be able to help.  Make sure it is something you are interested in, something you enjoy reading about and something you like talking to other people about. If you wake up excited about doing something related to this, then you've found your purpose.  One of the most inspiring stories I heard about was about two Canadian gentlemen who loved skiing. Each year, they would go skiing together with their families.  When they retired, they both decided to take their ski instructor certification and become ski instructors. And that is what they do today. They are both qualified ski instructors, and each winter they spend their days teaching people to ski.  This keeps them fit and strong and brings an incredible social experience.  I hope this has helped. If you have any questions around your retirement or impending retirement, let me know. I'm happy to answer your questions in this podcast.  And don't forget, I have recently launched a brand new programme called Designing the Perfect Retirement. This programme sets out a blueprint for you to create a retirement you find fulfilling and inspiring, and that keeps you fit, healthy and active.  In addition, this programme gives you access to a community where you can share experiences and advice. I will put the details for this programme in the show notes.  It just remains for me now to wish all a very, very productive week.   

Everyone is asking the same question right now:Is multifamily still a good investment in 2026?In this episode, we sit down with Reid Bennett, one of the most connected multifamily brokers in the country, to break down what's actually happening in the market.And the answer might surprise you.We cover:Why multifamily is still outperforming other asset classesThe key difference between today and the Great Financial CrisisWhy tenants aren't leaving apartments right nowHow overbuilding is impacting Sunbelt marketsWhy Midwest markets are tighteningHow brokers are doing deals in markets they've never visitedThe real power of LinkedIn for finding dealsHow AI is about to reshape commercial real estatePlus:A wild story about saving a deal with… a knee injury

On today's episode of In Time, Peter and Robyne reflect on what happens when things don't go according to plan, and why those moments often become the ones we remember most. What if life isn't meant to run perfectly, but to unfold in ways we can't always predict? How might trusting that things will work out change the way we move through stressful or uncertain situations? And what does it look like to pause in the middle of a stress cycle and gently reset, rather than push through it? Plus, a travel story that didn't go as expected, and ended up even better than planned.Follow Peter and Robyne on social media:Peter Katz: Facebook: @peterkatzmusic | Instagram: @peterkatzmusic | LinkedIn: Peter KatzDr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe: Twitter: @dr_robynehd | Instagram: @dr_robynehd | LinkedIn: drrobynehdLearn more about Peter & Robyne's digital course, Your Time.2026 © All Rights Reserved.

How can I revive the soul of my family? Whether you're a father, a husband, or a man preparing for those roles, listen to this. Dr. Joshua Straub presents a powerful picture of what it looks like to become emotionally safe, build intimacy with your spouse, enter your child's world, and protect your family in the spiritual realm.Joshua Straub is most renowned for his role as a husband and dad. A recovering human, he's passionate about the ongoing journey of growth through coaching, community, and fitness. Alongside his wife, Christi, he leads Famous at Home, equipping leaders and organizations in emotional intelligence and healthy family systems. Josh is a speaker, author of seven books, marriage and relational intelligence coach, and podcast cohost. He's had the privilege of coaching executives, entrepreneurs, entertainers, professional athletes, and nonprofit leaders, as well as serving military families across the country. At home, Josh and Christi are raising their three kids on a small homestead outside Nashville, TN, where life is full of family, faith, and a lot of fun.Learn more at joshuastraub.comBuy Joshua's book:Famous at Home: 7 Decisions to Put Your Family Center Stage in a World Competing for Your Time, Attention, and IdentityRegister now for the Husband Material Retreat in Georgia (April 24-27) at husbandmaterial.com/spring-retreatSupport the showTake the Husband Material Journey...Step 1: Listen to this podcast or watch on YouTubeStep 2: Join the private Husband Material CommunityStep 3: Take the free mini-course: How To Outgrow PornStep 4: Try the all-in-one program: Husband Material AcademyThanks for listening!

Podcast 411 Last July, I had a conversation with my father-in-law. He was scared and worried. He was due to retire at the end of 2026 (now only a few months away), and he had no idea what to do.  It was that conversation that inspired me to dig deep into what it takes to build a solid, meaningful and joyful retirement. That's what we're going to look into today. Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   Get the Designing The Perfect Retirement Programme Interview with Harvey Smith   Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 411 Hello, and welcome to episode 411 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'm in my mid-fifties now, a time when many people start to think about what they will do when they walk out of their workplace for the last time and enter the next chapter of their lives.  It's a scary time for many people. Yes, there's a lot to look forward to: being able to design your own days and go on trips whenever you want, without needing to submit a holiday request form. But there's an underlying sense of anxiety, will I be bored? Will I lose my health? Will I be lonely?  This is why giving some thought to your retirement before you retire can bring you a sense of relief and purpose.  But what do you want to do?  As the productivity saying goes, “You can do anything but not everything”.  So one of the first things to do when you begin thinking about your retirement is ask that question: What do I want to do?  And this is important.  My grandfather was a farmer all his working life. He had a dairy farm, and each morning at 5:00 am, he would wake up, bring the cows into the dairy and start the milking for the day.  He did this for over forty years, seven days a week. Farming is not so much work; it's a way of life. When my grandfather was not milking, he was repairing machines and fences, and doing all the other odd jobs that needed to be done.  At the age of 60, he retired.  His plan was to travel, something he's never been able to do, enjoy a little gardening and take life easy.  That didn't happen. For someone who had been active all his life, not having to get up early in the morning, come rain or shine, and now being able to stay in bed and have a leisurely morning reading the newspapers was a temptation that was hard to resist.  And so he stopped. He didn't do very much, and within two years, he was dead.  He was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, and while the operation to remove the cancer was successful, he developed complications and passed away a few weeks after the operation.  I was only 12 years old when he died, and it was the first family death I experienced. It was a horrible experience. I was close to my grandfather. He was a lovely person.  It woke me up to the frailties of a human life at an early age. Aunties and uncles often said he died because he retired. I was too young to understand that at the time, but I remember a friend of my mother's later once telling me that the biggest killer is your armchair.  That person was the famous international show jumper, Harvey Smith.  Harvey is 87 years old now. When he retired from show jumping in 1990, he didn't sit around in his armchair. His dream was to build a horse racing stable. And together with his wife, Sue, that is what they did.  In 2013, Harvey and Sue trained the horse Auroras Encore, which won the prestigious Grand National horse race at Aintree in Liverpool that year. I know many of my non-British listeners may not have heard of the Grand National, but anyone in the UK will know it is one of the biggest races on the horse racing calendar.  But not only that, Harvey's written at least four books, and he still doesn't spend much time in his armchair.  If you want to hear Harvey's words of wisdom, there is a superb YouTube video in which he and Sue are interviewed. I'll put that video link in the show notes. Harvey is a true Yorkshireman with the wonderful Yorkshire wit.  Retirement is not the end. It's the start of a new chapter in your life. You have built up a wealth of knowledge and experience and likely collected quite a few interests along the way. Retirement is your time to use that knowledge and work on the things that interest you.  So what interests you?  I've had a love of bonsai trees since I was in my twenties. I was probably inspired by the film The Karate Kid.  While I have a couple of trees now, I don't have the time to properly learn to nurture and grow them. However, when the time comes for me to slow down and retire, one thing I will do is spend a couple of weeks in Japan learning from the masters.  When I was researching retirement for my father-in-law, I came to see that there are three pillars you need to ensure are built into any plans you may have. The first is mental. This does not mean mental health as it is discussed today; it is about learning.  Learning something new.  That could be a foreign language, art history, or how to train racehorses. It doesn't matter so much what you learn; it is about learning something challenging. Something to get your brain around. Something that will make you think.  The dangers today are AI and the loss of critical thinking. In retirement, you do not want to lose the ability to think critically.  Go out and buy the textbooks, enrol in courses, listen to podcasts and do the hard work of learning. Keep your brain active.  It's this that will keep you sharp and cognitive. As the saying goes, “if you don't use it, you lose it.”  The second pillar is physical. After we reach 30, we start to lose muscle mass. Again, it's the “if you don't use it, you lose it” problem.  Unfortunately, for most of us, around thirty, we get chained to a desk and a computer, and we use our arms to help us get out of a chair. We stop using most of our muscles. This weakens our strength, and it is gradual. Hardly noticeable. So we don't see the damage we are doing to ourselves.  When we reach our mid-fifties, that muscle loss accelerates. We can lose as much as 10% of our muscle mass over five years. It's scary.  The consequence of this is that the risk of falling rises, and one of the biggest killers of older Adults is the complications of dealing with the injuries caused by falling. Broken hips, legs and shoulders. Not at all nice.  By adding in a daily exercise session that focuses on your core strength—stomach, legs and ankles, and doing some cardio such as walking up hills to the point where you become out of breath, is all you need.  Thirty minutes a day. That's it.  If you add in some stretching exercises later in the day, you are building a natural defence against one of the biggest underlying killers among older people.  Your muscles are your natural defence against many lifestyle-related diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and gout! Yes, gout is making a comeback. A disease prevalent in the 16th and 17th centuries is making a comeback because of how we live today.  Build in some exercise every day.  If you want a simple exercise programme, the one that the late Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, used every day from his time in the Royal Navy, then look up the 5BX. Look for the original Royal Canadian Air Force instructional video on YouTube. It's brilliant and very quaint.  If you want to know how effective this exercise programme is, look at Prince Philip at his final public engagement. He was 97 years old then, and you can see from the way he walked just how fit he was.  The final pillar is social.  When we are at work, there is a natural connection with our coworkers. There's a camaraderie and a social aspect to working with other people.  We may not like our coworkers, but there's still the connection.  When we retire, that disappears, and it's important to replace it with new connections.  However, there's a danger here. It can be tempting to replace all those meetings on our work calendars with volunteer work in retirement. Don't do this.  Go back to asking yourself what you want to do. Hopefully, what you want to do excites you. If you are replacing those work connections with volunteer work you do not find interesting, you will soon find yourself swamped.  Not what retirement is all about.  Be very strict about what you will get involved in. Be clear about what you want out of this chapter of your life.  Perhaps some of the hobbies you try will bring with them exciting connections. Imagine how many new people Harvey Smith has met through horse racing.  But do not rush into it. Take your time. This period of your life is about you and what you want from it.  If you are worried about retirement, or are retired and have found yourself overwhelmed by all the activities you have embarked on, I have just launched a brand-new programme to help you.  Ever since I started writing about time management and productivity ten years ago, I have had many people ask me to put together something for retirees.  It was my conversation with my father-in-law last year that started my research. And that research uncovered some of the most inspiring stories of people I have come across.  There was Jack Weber, a retired dentist who wrote a memoir of his life and published it on Amazon at the age of 100.  And then there was the gentleman who inspired me when I was fifteen years old.  I was a competitive track and field athlete back then, and this gentleman was in his 80s. He would be one of the first people to turn up to training every Tuesday and Thursday evening. When he was younger, he was a sprinter. Now, in his 80s, he ran marathons. Although he was in his 80s, he looked about 65.  I remember saying to myself that when I am 80, I want to be doing that. And that has been and still is a huge motivation for me. I've never stopped running and exercising for an extended period. I have tried to keep myself reasonably fit throughout my working life so that when I do finally retire, I will have the strength to run those marathons.  Watch out, London, New York, Tokyo and Paris. I'm going to be running your streets in twenty-five years' time!  If you are interested in this programme, I will put the details in the show notes. This programme will teach you about the three pillars, the pitfalls to avoid, and how to manage your calendar so you are not overwhelming yourself.  In addition, by joining, you get free access to a community of like-minded people where you can share your experiences and learn from others who are enjoying this fantastic chapter of your life.  Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

Send us Fan MailYou want the truth? Here it is—you're not overtraining, you're underprepared. Trent and Peaches cut through the nonsense and explain why your gym numbers don't mean squat if you can't run, swim, or handle actual stress.This one bounces from pipeline prep to real-world military reality—drone strikes, outdated systems, and why the Air Force (and honestly everyone) needs to toughen up again.Peaches hammers it home: stop obsessing over comfort, feelings, and perfect programming. Start building capacity, resilience, and actual usefulness. Because when things go sideways, nobody cares about your PR—they care if you can perform.If you're serious about making it, this episode might piss you off. Good. You probably need it.⏱️ Timestamps: 00:00 Stop Overthinking—Just Run More 02:45 The Overtraining Myth Is Killing You 06:30 Why OTS Coaching Is Underrated 09:30 Meet the “Unkillable” Athlete Standard 12:00 Strength ≠ Preparedness (Hard Truth) 16:30 Military Reality Check—It's Not a Game 20:00 Drone Warfare & Why We're Behind 26:00 Bureaucracy Is Slowing Everything Down 31:30 “If It's Your Time, It's Your Time” 35:00 Why Comfort Is Making the Force Soft 40:30 The Air Force Has a Culture Problem 45:00 Investment = Commitment (Fix This Now) 50:30 What Actually Matters in the Pipeline 55:00 Final Advice—Get Serious or Get Left

Are you working HARD but not getting the results you deserve? The problem might not be your deals — it might be the ROOMS you're in.   In this episode of The Vinney & Beau Show, Vinney Chopra and Beau dive deep into the #1 growth strategy most real estate investors overlook: intentional relationships. Plus, how AI is completely transforming hotel underwriting, deal analysis, and syndication — and how YOU can use it TODAY.  

In this special episode, join us for an insightful conversation with Natalie Jobity, a highly sought-after Transformational Leadership Coach known as "The Brilliance Unveiler." Natalie's inspiring journey began with her move from the Caribbean to the United States, where she faced early struggles with self-esteem and imposter syndrome. Drawing from her own experiences, Natalie shares her expertise in helping high-achieving female executives unlock their hidden power and potential.Tune in to this episode to learn valuable strategies for overcoming self-doubt, embracing leadership roles, and making a lasting impact in your profession. Natalie Jobity's wisdom and insights are sure to leave you feeling inspired and ready to unleash your own brilliance.To learn more about Natalie and her great work, visit her website: www.theunveiledway.com To pick up a copy of her book, “It's Your Time to Shine, Girl”: https://amzn.to/3GdLyQBShe also invites you to take the free Leadership quiz (https://www.theunveiledway.com/what-is-your-leadership-brand ), and Confidence quiz (https://www.theunveiledway.com/confidence-check-assessment)Lead with Confidence 20-page e-book offer: https://www.theunveiledway.com/lead-with-confidence-opt-in

Your Time and Energy are limited so make sure you monitor your best times and energy levels for home business. Get the “12 Weeks to Home Business Clarity Workbook” at https://homebizstartup.tv/12

On today's episode of In Time, Peter and Robyne reflect on the quiet coexistence of joy and grief and how our experiences shape the way we move through the world. What does it mean to hold both happiness and heaviness at the same time? How do the places we live become layered with personal meaning, even as others experience them completely differently? And what small moments of kindness or curiosity help us feel a little lighter along the way? Plus, a glimpse into the simple (and sometimes surprising) things that bring us joy - from deep dives into niche interests to the hope of becoming a delightfully unapologetic “old bird.”Follow Peter and Robyne on social media:Peter Katz: Facebook: @peterkatzmusic | Instagram: @peterkatzmusic | LinkedIn: Peter KatzDr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe: Twitter: @dr_robynehd | Instagram: @dr_robynehd | LinkedIn: drrobynehdLearn more about Peter & Robyne's digital course, Your Time.2026 © All Rights Reserved.

Have you ever wondered how those in highly demanding jobs that require almost 24/7 attention to the job manage to do it? Well, I've been researching and found a few common habits that may help you get more out of your day. Let's begin… Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   The 2026 Spring 50 Sale Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 410 Hello, and welcome to episode 410 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 seems everyone feels under pressure with increasing workloads and demands on their time. And research is backing this up.  Instead of reducing the workloads of the typical knowledge worker, AI is increasing it. In one study published last month in the Harvard Business Review, 83% of knowledge workers reported an increase in their workloads after adopting AI tools.  Yet even in the age before AI, smartphones, and desktop computers, there were jobs that required an intensity few people could or would endure for very long.  For example, if you were to look at the daily schedules of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, you would see an official workday beginning around 6:30 am and ending well after 7:00 pm, 7 days a week.  Just look at pictures of President Carter on his inauguration day and compare them to pictures of him on President Reagan's inauguration day; you can see the toll the presidency had on Carter. It seemed to have aged him 20 years, and yet it was only four.  If we were to look at President Obama's schedule. While he did not typically start work until around 9:00 am, he would work well into the night, catching up on briefing documents and other background reading. In total, he was working 12 hours a day, seven days a week.  Yet each of these leaders used techniques that helped maintain some calm amid otherwise chaotic days. They were well-tested, proven techniques that so many people seem afraid to use today.  This week's question is about these techniques and how you might adopt some of them to manage your workload while still having time for rest and family.  Let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question.  This week's question comes from Aaron. Aaron asks. Hi Carl, what advice would you give to someone who cannot get on top of their work, no matter how many “time blocks” they put on their calendar?  Hi Aaron, thank you for your question. Now, you didn't specify what kind of work you do, but I can answer based on what I've learned from former world leaders and CEOs and how they managed their days when facing global challenges. I know not all of us are running a major country, but lessons from people like Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Ford may help you see that there are ways to take control of your time, do the things you want to do, and get a lot done.  The first approach almost all highly effective people do is to protect time for quiet work. This might not necessarily be deep focused work; it could be reading reports or, in the case of presidents and prime ministers, briefing documents prepared for them by their staff.  Of the people I have read about and studied, all of them protected some time during the day. Mostly, this was early in the morning or late at night.  John F Kennedy, for instance, would read the newspapers at 6:30 am, before he met anyone in his office. This gave him a heads-up on emerging world events and often meant he knew more about a subject than any of his aides did.  One interesting note about Kennedy and his brother, Bobby, was that they both took a speed-reading course when they were younger, and it is reported that John Kennedy could read 1,200 words in one minute.  Imagine that. That's going to save you a lot of time. That's being able to read one of my longer blog posts in a single minute!  As a side note, it is reported that Theodore Roosevelt would read a book a day, sometimes two, as well as all his briefing documents.  Now, I suspect that in the early to mid 20th century, with no computers, people read far more than we do today. If you are reading thousands of words a day, you're naturally going to become a faster reader.  Presidents Nixon, Kennedy and Johnson would read briefing documents late into the night. In the case of Presidents Johnson and Nixon, this was often until 2:00 am in the morning.  President Obama also read late into the evening, from around 8:30 pm, after spending some time with his family, he would go to a quiet room and read until midnight or 1 am.  The advantage of doing their reading late at night was that they were unlikely to be disturbed, and it was quiet.  One thing you could do is set aside time somewhere in your day for undisturbed quiet work. Whether that is reading, working on a project or simply replying to your emails and messages.  Just this one change in your day will relieve some of the pressure you may be feeling. It will give you time to work on the non-urgent things that, if you ignore, will soon become urgent and add to the stress and anxiety that working reactively inevitably causes.  Now let's talk about structuring your day.  This is something that, if you're not doing, you'll find yourself getting pulled all over the place with no chance of getting on with anything important.  Structuring your day means planning out what you will do and when. When will you do your most important tasks of the day? When and where are your meetings? When will you take time to rest and relax with your family?  If you begin any day not knowing this, your day will run away with you.  Again, let me give you an example of a US president.  Jimmy Carter would disappear into the living quarters of the While House at precisely 6:30 pm every evening to have dinner with his family.  No matter what was going on in the world. Whether it was a Middle Eastern oil crisis, spiralling inflation or some other world crisis (sound familiar?), Carter would never miss his family's dinner hour. It was sacred.  During that time, nobody from his office was allowed to interrupt him, no matter what was going on in the world. That could wait an hour. Spending some quality time with his family could not. His daughter was young at that time, and she would go to bed around 8 or 9 pm.  Could you do that? Could you “disappear between 12 pm and 1 pm, cut off from the outside world; no phone or computer for one hour, so you could stop and enjoy lunch with your family or friends? It's easy to believe that we have to be “available” all the time. No, you do not.  Not even the leader of the Western world needed to be available every hour and minute of the day.  You're not dealing with a world crisis where people's lives are at stake. You're likely dealing with more mundane issues, like a customer who is frustrated because their ordered electric window motor hasn't arrived as promised. Or a boss who suddenly becomes agitated because sales dropped 12% last month.  Gee whizz! What can you do right now? Probably nothing. You're not going to be able to miraculously produce an electric window motor in a few seconds, nor can you change last month's sales figures.  These things can wait an hour or two. They really can!  This is why, when I get clients to do the “perfect week” exercise, I ask them to do their personal life first. This is the one area most people will sacrifice for their work.  When will you spend time with your family? When will you exercise? When will you spend time on your hobby?  These should be your non-negotiables every day.  President Eisenhower would stop work at 3:30 pm every day to spend an hour or two practising his golf on the White House putting green. President Johnson would go for his daily swim at 2:00 pm every day.  And Gerald Ford would start his day with an hour on his custom-built static bicycle and finish off with 50 push-ups. Every day!  It did not matter what was going on in the world; these presidents knew that exercise was important for them to function, and they made sure they were clear-headed enough to make the right decisions on some of the world's biggest and most urgent problems.  Your customer's missing electric window motor or your boss fretting about a 12% drop in sales is nothing compared to what these presidents had to deal with every day.  Make sure that what is important to you is prioritised, time protected and non-negotiable.  Urgent events will pass, and your being unavailable for an hour or two is not going to significantly affect the result one way or the other.  Another part of all these presidents' days was taken straight out of Winston Churchill's daily routine.  The daily nap.  When you are tired, stressed, anxious, and worn down by the constant noise and decision-making, you will no longer be able to make good, rational decisions. It's as if your brain tightens up and can no longer access your creative thinking.  Winston Churchill discovered this while serving in the army in India in the early 1900s. India is very hot during the day, and it was customary among the officer class to take naps during the warmest part of the day.  Churchill discovered that by taking a proper nap mid to late afternoon, you could do high-quality work well into the evening. And so, when he returned to the UK, he continued to take naps.  As Churchill said, "Nature has not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts twenty minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces.” Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Carter all took daily naps. Ranging from 30 to 60 minutes. It was their way of shutting out the noise of presidential work and giving their brains time to re-energise and refresh.  I remember when I first came to Korea and discovered that many of the office workers I was teaching were working 18-hour days and surviving on only 3 to 4 hours of sleep.  I asked them how they managed to do that six days a week, and they replied that they took a nap when they returned from lunch. Korean office workers are legendary for eating a full lunch in less than fifteen minutes. That left them with forty-five minutes to an hour for a nap.  Not so common today, working hours in Korea have reduced over the last ten years or so, but back in the early 2000s, work hours here were gruelling. So there you go, Aaron. There are ways of managing our workloads. It may mean you need to consider redesigning your work hours. The 9-to-5 concept is a relatively recent one. Before the 1980s, people in positions of authority would take longer lunches, and these were often social; and they would do much of their focused work either early in the morning or late at night (Tim Cook still does this)  But whatever you do, put your life first. Work is fleeting. Yes, it's a part of your life and an important one, but it is only a part of your life. Your personal life matters too.  Put your family and friends and health, both physical and mental, first. Then decide how you will structure your days so that the important things get done.  I hope that has helped. And don't forget that my Spring sale ends on Tuesday, 31 March (two days left). If you want to pick up my recent Time-Based Productivity course (which includes free access to the Time Sector System course) for just $99.00, you have about 48 hours left to get it.  Plus, you can save $50 on my 2-session coaching programme. A great way for me to help you personally get control of your system so you are more focused and clear-headed about what needs to be done and when.  I will put all the details in the show notes. Thank you, Aaron, for your question, and thank you to you, too, for listening.  It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.  

Today, on Karl and Crew, we wrapped up our weekly theme, “End Times Week and AI,” with Ruslan KD and Nick Skytland. Ruslan KD joined us to discuss godly ambition and how to pursue purpose and calling in a way that honors God. Ruslan is a Christian YouTuber, podcaster, and entrepreneur known for his thought-provoking commentary on faith, culture, and personal development. A former independent artist, he transitioned into digital media, where he creates content that bridges biblical wisdom with real-world issues. He is the founder of The God Bless Movement and author of the book “Godly Ambition: Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Time, Talent, and Treasure.” He is also preparing to kick off The Godly Ambition Tour in Chicago on April 10. Through his YouTube channels, Ruslan KD and Bless God Studios, he explores topics such as apologetics, cultural trends, and practical stewardship, inspiring audiences to live with purpose and intentionality. Nick Skytland also joined us to discuss how AI is shaping us and why believers should approach it with a biblical worldview. Nick is Vice President of Gloo Developer and AI Research, leading initiatives to shape open, values-aligned AI that supports human flourishing. Before joining Gloo, he spent more than two decades at NASA as Chief Technologist, advancing early-stage technologies and building some of the largest open innovation communities in history. He co-authored the book “What Comes Next? Shaping the Future in an Ever-Changing World.” Nick was also the co-founder of Quite Uncommon, a technology firm that helped organizations build, test, and launch new and innovative ideas. We then turned to the phone lines to hear from our listeners. We asked the question, “what did God use to grab you heart and transform your soul?” You can hear the highlights of today’s program on the Karl and Crew Showcast. If you're looking to hear a particular segment from the show, look at the following time stamps: Nick Skytland [ 05:18 ]Ruslan KD [ 39:34 ]Callers Question [ 56:05 ]Donate to Moody Radio: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/morningshowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, on Karl and Crew, we wrapped up our weekly theme, “End Times Week and AI,” with Ruslan KD and Nick Skytland. Ruslan KD joined us to discuss godly ambition and how to pursue purpose and calling in a way that honors God. Ruslan is a Christian YouTuber, podcaster, and entrepreneur known for his thought-provoking commentary on faith, culture, and personal development. A former independent artist, he transitioned into digital media, where he creates content that bridges biblical wisdom with real-world issues. He is the founder of The God Bless Movement and author of the book “Godly Ambition: Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Time, Talent, and Treasure.” He is also preparing to kick off The Godly Ambition Tour in Chicago on April 10. Through his YouTube channels, Ruslan KD and Bless God Studios, he explores topics such as apologetics, cultural trends, and practical stewardship, inspiring audiences to live with purpose and intentionality. Nick Skytland also joined us to discuss how AI is shaping us and why believers should approach it with a biblical worldview. Nick is Vice President of Gloo Developer and AI Research, leading initiatives to shape open, values-aligned AI that supports human flourishing. Before joining Gloo, he spent more than two decades at NASA as Chief Technologist, advancing early-stage technologies and building some of the largest open innovation communities in history. He co-authored the book “What Comes Next? Shaping the Future in an Ever-Changing World.” Nick was also the co-founder of Quite Uncommon, a technology firm that helped organizations build, test, and launch new and innovative ideas. We then turned to the phone lines to hear from our listeners. We asked the question, “what did God use to grab you heart and transform your soul?” You can hear the highlights of today’s program on the Karl and Crew Showcast. If you're looking to hear a particular segment from the show, look at the following time stamps: Nick Skytland [ 05:18 ]Ruslan KD [ 39:34 ]Callers Question [ 56:05 ]Donate to Moody Radio: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/morningshowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, on Karl and Crew, we wrapped up our weekly theme, “End Times Week and AI,” with Ruslan KD and Nick Skytland. Ruslan KD joined us to discuss godly ambition and how to pursue purpose and calling in a way that honors God. Ruslan is a Christian YouTuber, podcaster, and entrepreneur known for his thought-provoking commentary on faith, culture, and personal development. A former independent artist, he transitioned into digital media, where he creates content that bridges biblical wisdom with real-world issues. He is the founder of The God Bless Movement and author of the book “Godly Ambition: Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Time, Talent, and Treasure.” He is also preparing to kick off The Godly Ambition Tour in Chicago on April 10. Through his YouTube channels, Ruslan KD and Bless God Studios, he explores topics such as apologetics, cultural trends, and practical stewardship, inspiring audiences to live with purpose and intentionality. Nick Skytland also joined us to discuss how AI is shaping us and why believers should approach it with a biblical worldview. Nick is Vice President of Gloo Developer and AI Research, leading initiatives to shape open, values-aligned AI that supports human flourishing. Before joining Gloo, he spent more than two decades at NASA as Chief Technologist, advancing early-stage technologies and building some of the largest open innovation communities in history. He co-authored the book “What Comes Next? Shaping the Future in an Ever-Changing World.” Nick was also the co-founder of Quite Uncommon, a technology firm that helped organizations build, test, and launch new and innovative ideas. We then turned to the phone lines to hear from our listeners. We asked the question, “what did God use to grab you heart and transform your soul?” You can hear the highlights of today’s program on the Karl and Crew Showcast. If you're looking to hear a particular segment from the show, look at the following time stamps: Nick Skytland [ 05:18 ]Ruslan KD [ 39:34 ]Callers Question [ 56:05 ]Donate to Moody Radio: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/morningshowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, on Karl and Crew, we wrapped up our weekly theme, “End Times Week and AI,” with Ruslan KD and Nick Skytland. Ruslan KD joined us to discuss godly ambition and how to pursue purpose and calling in a way that honors God. Ruslan is a Christian YouTuber, podcaster, and entrepreneur known for his thought-provoking commentary on faith, culture, and personal development. A former independent artist, he transitioned into digital media, where he creates content that bridges biblical wisdom with real-world issues. He is the founder of The God Bless Movement and author of the book “Godly Ambition: Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Time, Talent, and Treasure.” He is also preparing to kick off The Godly Ambition Tour in Chicago on April 10. Through his YouTube channels, Ruslan KD and Bless God Studios, he explores topics such as apologetics, cultural trends, and practical stewardship, inspiring audiences to live with purpose and intentionality. Nick Skytland also joined us to discuss how AI is shaping us and why believers should approach it with a biblical worldview. Nick is Vice President of Gloo Developer and AI Research, leading initiatives to shape open, values-aligned AI that supports human flourishing. Before joining Gloo, he spent more than two decades at NASA as Chief Technologist, advancing early-stage technologies and building some of the largest open innovation communities in history. He co-authored the book “What Comes Next? Shaping the Future in an Ever-Changing World.” Nick was also the co-founder of Quite Uncommon, a technology firm that helped organizations build, test, and launch new and innovative ideas. We then turned to the phone lines to hear from our listeners. We asked the question, “what did God use to grab you heart and transform your soul?” You can hear the highlights of today’s program on the Karl and Crew Showcast. If you're looking to hear a particular segment from the show, look at the following time stamps: Nick Skytland [ 05:18 ]Ruslan KD [ 39:34 ]Callers Question [ 56:05 ]Donate to Moody Radio: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/morningshowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, on Karl and Crew, we wrapped up our weekly theme, “End Times Week and AI,” with Ruslan KD and Nick Skytland. Ruslan KD joined us to discuss godly ambition and how to pursue purpose and calling in a way that honors God. Ruslan is a Christian YouTuber, podcaster, and entrepreneur known for his thought-provoking commentary on faith, culture, and personal development. A former independent artist, he transitioned into digital media, where he creates content that bridges biblical wisdom with real-world issues. He is the founder of The God Bless Movement and author of the book “Godly Ambition: Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Time, Talent, and Treasure.” He is also preparing to kick off The Godly Ambition Tour in Chicago on April 10. Through his YouTube channels, Ruslan KD and Bless God Studios, he explores topics such as apologetics, cultural trends, and practical stewardship, inspiring audiences to live with purpose and intentionality. Nick Skytland also joined us to discuss how AI is shaping us and why believers should approach it with a biblical worldview. Nick is Vice President of Gloo Developer and AI Research, leading initiatives to shape open, values-aligned AI that supports human flourishing. Before joining Gloo, he spent more than two decades at NASA as Chief Technologist, advancing early-stage technologies and building some of the largest open innovation communities in history. He co-authored the book “What Comes Next? Shaping the Future in an Ever-Changing World.” Nick was also the co-founder of Quite Uncommon, a technology firm that helped organizations build, test, and launch new and innovative ideas. We then turned to the phone lines to hear from our listeners. We asked the question, “what did God use to grab you heart and transform your soul?” You can hear the highlights of today’s program on the Karl and Crew Showcast. If you're looking to hear a particular segment from the show, look at the following time stamps: Nick Skytland [ 05:18 ]Ruslan KD [ 39:34 ]Callers Question [ 56:05 ]Donate to Moody Radio: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/morningshowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, on Karl and Crew, we wrapped up our weekly theme, “End Times Week and AI,” with Ruslan KD and Nick Skytland. Ruslan KD joined us to discuss godly ambition and how to pursue purpose and calling in a way that honors God. Ruslan is a Christian YouTuber, podcaster, and entrepreneur known for his thought-provoking commentary on faith, culture, and personal development. A former independent artist, he transitioned into digital media, where he creates content that bridges biblical wisdom with real-world issues. He is the founder of The God Bless Movement and author of the book “Godly Ambition: Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Time, Talent, and Treasure.” He is also preparing to kick off The Godly Ambition Tour in Chicago on April 10. Through his YouTube channels, Ruslan KD and Bless God Studios, he explores topics such as apologetics, cultural trends, and practical stewardship, inspiring audiences to live with purpose and intentionality. Nick Skytland also joined us to discuss how AI is shaping us and why believers should approach it with a biblical worldview. Nick is Vice President of Gloo Developer and AI Research, leading initiatives to shape open, values-aligned AI that supports human flourishing. Before joining Gloo, he spent more than two decades at NASA as Chief Technologist, advancing early-stage technologies and building some of the largest open innovation communities in history. He co-authored the book “What Comes Next? Shaping the Future in an Ever-Changing World.” Nick was also the co-founder of Quite Uncommon, a technology firm that helped organizations build, test, and launch new and innovative ideas. We then turned to the phone lines to hear from our listeners. We asked the question, “what did God use to grab you heart and transform your soul?” You can hear the highlights of today’s program on the Karl and Crew Showcast. If you're looking to hear a particular segment from the show, look at the following time stamps: Nick Skytland [ 05:18 ]Ruslan KD [ 39:34 ]Callers Question [ 56:05 ]Donate to Moody Radio: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/morningshowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, on Karl and Crew, we wrapped up our weekly theme, “End Times Week and AI,” with Ruslan KD and Nick Skytland. Ruslan KD joined us to discuss godly ambition and how to pursue purpose and calling in a way that honors God. Ruslan is a Christian YouTuber, podcaster, and entrepreneur known for his thought-provoking commentary on faith, culture, and personal development. A former independent artist, he transitioned into digital media, where he creates content that bridges biblical wisdom with real-world issues. He is the founder of The God Bless Movement and author of the book “Godly Ambition: Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Time, Talent, and Treasure.” He is also preparing to kick off The Godly Ambition Tour in Chicago on April 10. Through his YouTube channels, Ruslan KD and Bless God Studios, he explores topics such as apologetics, cultural trends, and practical stewardship, inspiring audiences to live with purpose and intentionality. Nick Skytland also joined us to discuss how AI is shaping us and why believers should approach it with a biblical worldview. Nick is Vice President of Gloo Developer and AI Research, leading initiatives to shape open, values-aligned AI that supports human flourishing. Before joining Gloo, he spent more than two decades at NASA as Chief Technologist, advancing early-stage technologies and building some of the largest open innovation communities in history. He co-authored the book “What Comes Next? Shaping the Future in an Ever-Changing World.” Nick was also the co-founder of Quite Uncommon, a technology firm that helped organizations build, test, and launch new and innovative ideas. We then turned to the phone lines to hear from our listeners. We asked the question, “what did God use to grab you heart and transform your soul?” You can hear the highlights of today’s program on the Karl and Crew Showcast. If you're looking to hear a particular segment from the show, look at the following time stamps: Nick Skytland [ 05:18 ]Ruslan KD [ 39:34 ]Callers Question [ 56:05 ]Donate to Moody Radio: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/morningshowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you've ever felt like you're right on the edge of your next level—only to pull back, procrastinate, or create stress out of nowhere… this episode is for you. In this episode of It's Your Time, Michelle breaks down the upper limit problem, a concept from Gay Hendricks' The Big Leap, and explains why so many high-achieving women unconsciously self-sabotage when things start going well. You'll learn how your nervous system, subconscious beliefs, and identity work together to keep you operating within a familiar "set point" for success—and why growth can actually feel like anxiety. Michelle also introduces the concept of disintegration anxiety, where your old identity begins to fall away before your next level fully forms—and why that discomfort is not a sign to stop, but a sign you're evolving. This episode blends neuroscience, cognitive behavioral tools, and identity work to help you understand what's really happening when you feel stuck or overwhelmed at the edge of growth. In this episode, you'll learn: What the upper limit problem is and how it shows up as self-sabotage Why your brain perceives success and growth as a threat The role of your amygdala and nervous system in holding you back What disintegration anxiety is and why it's a necessary part of growth How to shift automatic thoughts using CBT-based tools Practical ways to regulate your nervous system and expand your identity If you're a high-performing woman in sales or leadership who feels like you should be further along—but something keeps holding you back—this episode will help you understand why. And more importantly, what to do next.  

Email, Teams, Slack and other instant messaging systems are great, until they clog up our day and we find we spend more time responding to messages than we do doing any meaningful work.  What can we do? Well, that's what I'm answering in this week's episode. Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   Get the Email Mastery Course Here The Hybrid Productivity Course    Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 409 Hello, and welcome to episode 409 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.  Last week was a workshop week for me. I finished off the Ultimate Productivity Workshop and held an in-company session.  During both sessions, a similar question was raised. How to manage your time when you are compelled to respond to your messages instantly or at the very least within a few minutes.  The problem with this situation is that it's an uncontrollable one. You have no idea when or how many messages will come in on any given day. This makes it practically impossible to do any work.  You will not be able to focus on anything if you have to be checking your messages inbox all the time.  Now, I should caveat this: if you are employed to respond to client messages, then being responsive is part of your core work, and therefore it is something you would prioritise.  However, in these situations, you'll likely be working as part of a team, and most of your client queries will be handled in real time. Those that cannot be dealt with would be escalated to another person or department.  The issue of response times arises when you are expected to do work that requires quiet, focused time to complete. In this situation, you will need to find time during the day to do that work. If not, all you will be doing is building unsustainable backlogs.  To get to a place where you can complete your work and respond to messages in a timely manner, something will have to change.  The first thing I would address here is response times. What is the expected response time for the work that you do? Is it realistic?  Now, you have the data. You know how much time you need to do your work. Perhaps you need two hours a day to complete it. This means you have a degree of flexibility each day. In this situation, I would recommend you look at the times when most of your messages come in.  For me, most of my messages come in through the night. I may go to bed around midnight with an empty inbox, but when I wake up, come through to the office and open my email, there will be between 100 and 150 emails sitting there waiting for me.  The first step is to clear those emails and sort the ones I need to act on from the ones that can be deleted or archived. That gives me a heads-up for my day and calms my anxious mind, knowing there are no fires to deal with. Later in the day, I will set aside 40 to 60 minutes to clear the actionable emails.  Now, I am fortunate in that when I wake up, Europe is asleep, the east coast of the US is going to bed, and the west coast is finishing the working day. In the morning, there is no rush for me to respond.  If I were living in the UK, I would adjust my response time to better align with the time zones I work with.  This is working with the data I have.  But let me illustrate a different type of work and how to deal with it. Imagine you were responsible for writing proposals for your sales team. On a typical day, you would receive six to eight new proposals and four or five adjustments to make to proposals you have already done.  If it takes you an average of twenty minutes to write a new proposal and ten minutes to make an adjustment, that will take up around four hours of your day just focused on writing proposals.  That does not take into account having to request any further information you may need to complete a proposal.  Now here's where things get interesting. Not all proposals are equal. If you were asked to write proposals for a $10 million project and a $1,000 one, the $10 million project would likely take priority.  I'm also pretty sure the person asking for the $10 million project proposal will be chasing you to get it done faster.  If you already have a two-day turnaround on proposals, moving that project up would delay one of the other proposals. What do you do?  The problem here is that while you are fielding messages from the people wanting their proposal done today, you are not writing proposals. Everything is getting delayed.  Now, I've worked at companies with strict processes for these situations. Salespeople had to follow the process and inform their customers when to expect proposals or invoices. They were not allowed to contact the sales admin team to chase proposals unless they were overdue.  I've also worked in companies where there were no such processes. In those companies, nothing ever seemed to get done on time.  There needs to be time for things to get done, and in order to ensure they do get done on time, a process should be put in place.  For example, if your proposal turnaround is within 24 hours, then there needs to be a cutoff time. If you want your proposal done by tomorrow at 4:00 pm, it needs to be in by 4:30 pm today.  This puts the responsibility onto the person asking for the proposal. If they do not get the proposal in on time, the delay will be entirely their own problem.  When you do not have these processes in place, you risk running into a company that plays the blame game.  I remember working for an English Language training company here in Korea, and I wanted to launch a new Business English Programme in August.  We had a meeting at the head office and the CEO told me that if we wanted to launch on 1st August, then I would need to get the curriculum and artwork to the marketing team by the 15th June.  Brilliant! As long as we got the necessary work over to the Marketing Department by 15th June, then the responsibility for the marketing was on the marketing team. They delivered, and we had a fantastic launch. From my perspective, handing over the materials to the marketing team before the 15th took a huge weight off my shoulders.  It was a superb team where both parties respected each other's boundaries and, more importantly, timelines. Everyone involved knew each other's deadlines, and these were respected.  Another way to deal with communications is to set some rules. A sort of “if this then that” rule.  For example, I have a rule that any message relating to lost passwords or money, I will deal with the moment I see it.  Fortunately, I do not get many of these, but I do get around three or four a month. When I see them, I act on them immediately. They don't take long to deal with, but I know how frustrating it is to wait a long time to access a course or get a refund.  Another rule I have is that if I get a student question, I will respond within 24 hours.  With AI, it can be tempting to set up an AI system to respond to these for me, but I have a red line I will not cross. That is, I will personally respond to all questions within 24 hours and never farm them out to a chatbot.  That goes to my professional integrity. I would feel awful knowing that I am not communicating directly with my students. It would feel like I am cheating.  However, by far the most effective way to deal with the interruptions messages can cause, whether they are emails or messages, is to set your own communication response times.  For example, mine are: Email within 24 hours, instant messages (Teams, Slack, etc.) within four hours and phone calls within an hour if I cannot answer immediately.  Those response times have worked for over ten years now. I've never received any pushback, and most of the time I get a “thank you for your quick response”,—which suggests people are really back at responding to emails.  If you do decide to set your own response times, communicate them with your colleagues and customers. This way, you can be held accountable for your standards. That's a great motivator.  Let's get back to checking messages.  If you do need time to do work that requires your focus, then, when you are doing that work, you do not check your messages. Period. Turn off notifications when you are doing that work, close down your email, Teams or Slack and any other messaging system.  Your phone can be set up to allow only a vetted number of people through. For instance, when I put my phone or computer on “focus time”, only my wife and mother can get through. Only my mother or my wife would call me with a genuine emergency.  Most people can only do real focused work for around ninety minutes. At that point, you can check your messages.  According to neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, we work in 90-minute cycles. (We also sleep in 90-minute cycles). This means our brain begins to run low on energy after we have been intently focused on something for more than 90 minutes, and we need to change our focus.  I use this time to quickly check my messages and do some chores. Most of the time, I process my inbox, then respond to my team's messages on my phone while I am doing the chores.  The reality is you cannot be constantly checking your messages and doing meaningful work at the same time. Something has to give.  If you are in a position where others cannot do their work until you have authorised it, you are the bottleneck, and that needs to change.  Working in a law office, we needed to get cheques signed by a partner in the firm. Normally, I would go to the partner in charge of my department, but if he were away or in a meeting, I would need to go to another floor and ask another partner to sign it. My boss knew there was a risk that he could be a bottleneck and took steps to prevent others from doing their work.  I know I have given you a lot of ideas in this episode. What I would suggest is that if interruptions from messages are causing you problems, look at where the main problem is. If it's because you feel you must respond instantly to messages from certain people (your boss or customers), that may indicate you need to have a conversation with them to set some boundaries.  I know that conversation may be uncomfortable, but not being able to do your work to the high standard you want is a much bigger problem. That's going to affect your promotion chances, and eventually, you will start to believe that there's something wrong with you.  There's nothing wrong with you. All it requires is some processes and a boundary you can work within. Surely that's not much to ask of anyone.  Thank you for listening, and thank you to all of you who have asked questions about this subject.  If you want a system that will help you to regain control of your emails and messages, then my Email Mastery course will show you how to build it. I will include the course details in the show notes for you. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

Time is one of the most valuable assets in a service-based business. Yet many owners and teams spend most of their week searching for information, copying data, formatting documents.In this episode, Greg Boone, CEO at Walk West, explains how artificial intelligence, AI tools, automation, and agent workflows can give business owners back nearly 80% of their time. You learn how AI transforms marketing, consulting, operations, and knowledge work by reducing manual work, improving research, accelerating analysis, and helping teams move faster with better insights. The conversation focuses on AI adoption, AI strategy, productivity, marketing technology, data analysis, AI agents, and practical ways to integrate AI into everyday business workflows.Key takeaways:AI can eliminate massive time waste. Explains how knowledge workers spend 50–60% of their week searching for information.You can reclaim up to 80% of administrative work. AI can complete weeks of work in minutes by automating research and analysis.AI works best as a thinking partner. Using AI to instruct, analyze data, generate ideas, and support decision making.AI reveals insights hidden in your data. Businesses can analyze meeting transcripts, reports, and unstructured data.Training matters for AI adoption. Without guidance, employees may misuse tools or rely on basic features, leaving most of AI's real value unused.Tune in to the full episode of ▶️How AI Can Give You Back 80% of Your Time with Greg Boone.Find more podcast episodes on our website: anderscpa.com/learn/podcasts/  Episode resources:●       Anders Virtual CFO by Anders website: anderscpa.com  ●       Love our content? Sign up for our newsletter:  https://anderscpa.com/learn/    ●       Check out the Virtual CFO Playbook Course:  https://anderscpa.com/virtual-cfo-services/vcfo-playbook/     Quotes-Greg Boone: "We get hyper-focused on the process of how we do things. AI doesn't care about your process—it only cares about the outcome.”-Jody Grunden: "Most firms struggle with growth because they rely on habits that worked when the company was smaller."Greg Boone is the CEO of Walk West and a technology leader known for building high-performing teams that drive digital transformation. With decades of experience across leadership roles from director to CEO and advisor, Greg champions a people-first approach to business and innovation. His philosophy is simple: build great people first, and they will build a great company. Greg has led teams that served major brands including Charter, Panera Bread, Nascar, and Le Creuset while maintaining exceptional client loyalty. Today, he focuses on helping organizations leverage technology and AI to work smarter, unlock productivity, and give leaders back valuable time.LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregboone/IG: https://www.instagram.com/greg.boone/  Walk WestWebsite: https://walkwest.com/ FB: https://www.facebook.com/WalkWestLI: https://www.linkedin.com/company/

"The key is not to prioritise what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities."  Ah, Stephen Covey got it right. If you don't know what your priorities are, whatever's on your calendar will be prioritised, which often means low-value meetings and other people's urgencies. Not a great way to work if you want to be more productive and better at managing your time.  This week, we're looking at identifying your core work and eliminating the non-essential.  Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Hybrid Productivity Course  Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 408 Hello, and welcome to episode 408 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.  Something that came up in last weekend's Ultimate Productivity Workshop was around identifying your core work. The work you are employed to do or what you do to put food on your table.  In the past, this was easy to do. Job descriptions were simple, and job titles included things like salesperson, accountant, lawyer, administrator, receptionist, lifeguard, and office manager. It was very clear what your responsibilities were, and defining your core work was simple.  Today, hmmm, something's gone disastrously wrong. Now we have job titles such as Empathy Engineer (a software designer), Scrum Master (a project manager of sorts from the twenty-teens Agile trend) or Digital Overlord (a website or systems manager). These are unclear and ill-defined, and figuring out what these jobs entail is challenging, to say the least, but not impossible with some thought.  Then there are jobs such as the “C” roles: CEO, CFO, COO, etc. These are notoriously difficult to define because they are intentionally vague and depend on the company's size, its goals and often the state of the company when a person starts the role.  When Tim Cook took over from Steve Jobs in 2011, he took over a company on the up. When Satya Nadalla took over Microsoft, Microsoft was struggling in the rapidly growing mobile market. Same job titles, but entirely different roles given the state each company was in when they took over. In today's episode, we're looking at core work and, more importantly, how to define your role so you can pull out the tasks you need to do consistently to perform well and make it easier to prioritise the things important to you.  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 Chris. Chris asks, hi Carl, I am really struggling to define my core work. I am a sales manager in a medium-sized car dealership. I manage a team of 12 salespeople, and I report directly to the General Manager. The part I am struggling with is what my tasks should be each week. Could you help? Hi Chris, thank you for your question.  For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of core work, your core work is the work you are employed to do. It's how you are evaluated and the reason you were employed. The issue with core work is that over time, the scope of your work can expand to a point where you have so many competing priorities that it becomes practically impossible to decide what needs your attention. And that's when backlogs of important work start to grow uncontrollably.  This can be caused by our innate human need to please people, so we say “yes” to too many things without considering whether we have the time to do the work we ‘volunteered' to do.  The problem here is that once you have said yes to the work outside your core work, you own it. It is now your responsibility to get the job done. Do this too often, and the line between what you are responsible for and what you volunteered to do becomes blurred.  A few years ago, I worked with a client who was a product manager in a pharmaceutical company. Her core work was to ensure that her product's labelling, literature, and local branding were accurate and up to date. She was also responsible for three sales campaigns each year.  Unfortunately, Sam was a people pleaser. She couldn't say no to anyone. She volunteered to be on the Annual kick-off event committee (each year the company had an off-site retreat to motivate the team for the new year), she volunteered to be the lead of a breast cancer awareness campaign her company wanted to run, and if a sales manager asked her to do a presentation to their sales people, she'd always say yes.  But her people pleasing was not confined to her professional life. She volunteered to help organise events at her church, committed to watching her husband play football every weekend and would help her friends out at the drop of a hat.  When I began working with Sam, she was a mess. Her weight had ballooned because she had no time for any physical movement or to watch what she ate; she wasn't able to sleep properly, and she was suffering quite badly from eczema, brought on by stress and a lack of sleep.  The first thing I did was get Sam to write down her original core work. I remember her having to pull out her job description to remind her what that was.  When she looked at it, she began to cry. She confessed that what she did at work was nothing like what was written on those sheets of paper.  So that's where we started.  I also got her to talk to her boss about stepping down from all the volunteer roles she'd accepted so she could focus on the work she was employed to do.  Her boss was brilliant. She helped Sam remove herself from the volunteer roles so she could focus on what mattered.  Within six months, Sam's product was the top-selling product in the company. She'd lost 20 pounds in weight, she was sleeping well, and her eczema had all but disappeared.  She was focused on what mattered and did that brilliantly. So much so that she was promoted after a further year.  I tell that story because it demonstrates why defining your core work is so important. If you are not clear about what you are employed to do, in an effort to look busy and not upset anyone, you will keep accepting more and more roles outside the scope of the job you were employed to do.  This does not mean that you should never accept voluntary roles or help out your colleagues from time to time. It means you should never lose sight of what you are employed to do. And to do that, you first need to identify what it is, then take it to the next level.  That level identifies what doing your core work looks like at the task level. In other words, what do you actually do to perform your core work? So, returning to your role, Chris, as a sales manager, a part of your role will be to support your sales team. What does that look like at a doing level? Does that mean you need to schedule weekly one-to-ones with your team? Maybe you are also responsible for ensuring that the sales data is correct and up to date.  Scheduling weekly one-to-ones is relatively straightforward. You may choose to dedicate a day to doing this, so your focus is on supporting your team and, in doing so, removing a weekly decision.  For example, if you choose to hold your meetings on Mondays, you can block your calendar on those days and get them all done in one day.  Maintaining your sales admin may involve 30 minutes a day of updating your company's internal reporting system. If so, when will you do that?  You may also be responsible for the training of your team. I know many managers are. If so, what does that involve, and what do you need to do personally to ensure it happens?  So what you are doing is looking at the type of work you do and then asking yourself what that looks like at a doing level.  Many medical doctors I speak with tell me their work is more than just seeing patients. Some of their additional roles include renewing prescriptions, completing insurance claims, and sorting out referrals to specialists.  This means being a general practitioner is not as simple as walking into their clinic, going to their office and examining patients all day. They need to find time to do the additional work, which is often an extra 2 hours or more each day.  Once you have identified your core work and pulled out what that looks like at the task level, the next step is to calculate how much time you will need to complete those tasks each week.  In theory, this is easy. After all, if you have done something before, you should be able to figure out how long it will take you to do the same task in the future.  Hahaha, not so easy. We are not machines, and some days we are not at our best. We might be tired, distracted or feeling ill.  And those distractions may not even be of our own choosing. Other people interrupt you, ask you questions, or you are prevented from doing one of your critical tasks because a colleague has not given you the information you need.  I remember talking with a gentleman who ran a car servicing business, and he told me that the biggest issue he had each day was something called “back orders”. This is where a part for a customer's car was out of stock and on order.  Nobody knew when the part would be back in stock, so they could not tell the customer when to bring their car in for the repair, or, worse, the customer could not come in to pick up their repaired car.  In these situations, all you can do is work on the averages.  I've been writing a weekly blog post of around 1,000 words each week for over ten years. You would have thought I would know how long writing a blog post would take by now, after doing it over 500 times. Not a chance.  Some weeks it can take me forty minutes; other weeks, as much as two hours, to write the first draft.  It's the same for these podcasts. This week's episode is number 408, which means I've written 407 scripts, and yet some weeks it takes two hours; others, four. And the worst thing is, I have no idea when I sit down to write the script how long it will take.  In these situations, all you can do is work on averages. I allow two hours for writing these scripts. Most weeks, I can do it in that time; other weeks, I need to find additional time later in the week to finish them.  Same with my blog posts. I have two hours each week protected for writing the posts. Most weeks, I finish well within that time; other weeks, I need the whole time.  I'm working on averages, which ensures the bulk of what needs to be done gets done every week.  And this brings us to the main reason for identifying your core work:  Once you know what your core work is and what you need to do at a task level, you know how much time you need to protect for this work each week. That information alone will tell you how many meetings and voluntary work you can accept each week.  Not knowing what your core work looks like at a task level risks putting yourself in Sam's shoes. And if Sam were here with me, I know she'd be telling you never to let that happen to you. It destroys your health and leaves you feeling rotten every day.  There you go, Chris. Thank you for your question, and thank you to all of you who attended the Ultimate Productivity Workshop over the last two weeks. It's always a joy to help you, and it helps me see where you are struggling with productivity and time management.  Thank you for listening, and it's time for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

“By far, the greatest danger of AI is that people conclude too early that they understand it” —Eliezer Yudkowsky, AI researcher AI is everywhere today, and there are many exciting claims about what it can do to help us be more productive. But, is this just hype, or are there aspects of AI that can improve our productivity?  That's the question I am answering today.  Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Hybrid Productivity Course  Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 407 Hello, and welcome to episode 407 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 noticed AI is everywhere. Our favourite apps seem to be adding more and more AI capability with each new update. And then there's almost every video and article on productivity warning us that if we don't get on board with this, we'll be left behind on the scrap heap.  It's also an exciting time, and there's no doubt that things are changing, and people are finding new ways to use AI to help us do our work.  But beyond the hype, how are current AI models really helping with productivity, and what will this mean for us as we try to manage our time in the future?  That's what I am looking at this week, and to get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question.  This week's question comes from Chris. Chris asks, Hi Carl, I haven't heard you talk much about AI in your videos or articles. How do you see AI helping us with our time management and productivity in the future?  Hi Chris, thank you for your question.  The reason I have not written or spoken much about AI is that I am waiting to see where it settles down.  Currently, it's hard to work out what is true and what is pure hype. I saw a lot of noise about OpenClaw—an AI-type personal assistant that, if you give it access to your computer, can do a lot of things, such as make appointments for you, book flights, sort and reply to your emails and much more.  That was certainly interesting, but once I discovered that I would need to hand over all my passwords and credit card numbers to OpenClaw, I lost interest.  Call me old-fashioned, but I'm not comfortable giving up my passwords, credit card and banking details to a third party. Certainly not one that could be hacked very easily.  Last year, I read Dominic Sandbrook's series of books on British history from 1956 to 1982. That period covered some very interesting developments in technology, from the dawn of the nuclear power age to the introduction of the personal computer. In the late 1950s, it was predicted that we would all be driving around in nuclear-powered cars and that our homes would have their own nuclear power generators that would only need recharging every 10 to 20 years by the end of the century. Hmm how did that work out?  To better answer your question, Chris, I stepped back and looked at how I am using AI today. My main use of AI is searching for specific information. In a way, AI has replaced how I search the internet. I use Google's Gemini, and it is fantastic at collecting the information I want.  No longer do I have to open multiple websites to try to find the information. This has significantly reduced the time I spend going down rabbit holes looking for something specific and being pulled down holes I never intended to go.  I also use AI to generate subtitles and timestamps for my YouTube videos. Without AI, these jobs would take hours. AI can do it in minutes.  I use Grammarly to spell-check my writing, and I believe it uses AI in the background to suggest how sentences are written.  I rarely accept Grammarly's sentence suggestions. It seems to destroy my voice and turn sentences into bland perfections that lack resonance or feeling.  Beyond that, I am not knowingly using AI for anything else. I asked my wife how she is using it. My wife's a full-time student, studying physical therapy, so she's learning a lot about human anatomy and medical terms.  She's using AI to simplify complex concepts. She also occasionally uses Google's Nano Banana to generate graphics for her presentations.  So, if I look at how AI might help us with time management and productivity in the future, it does look like there will be some aspects of our work that AI can significantly speed up. In my case, generating subtitles and time stamps for videos is a great example.  However, when it comes to managing our calendars and task lists, I'm not sure you would want AI getting involved.  One thing I've always been acutely aware of is that much of what makes us feel overwhelmed is the sense that we have no control over how we spend our time.  We have calendars full of meetings, and sometimes we find ourselves double and even triple-booked. And then we have long lists of to-dos in our task managers with no sense of when or even how we will ever get that work done.  At best, AI may be able to break down those tasks into what it thinks are manageable chunks, but that won't take into consideration how you are feeling physically, whether you slept well last night or had a rather heavy lunch with an important customer.  AI can certainly suggest ways to manage your tasks and calendar, but you will still need to show up to those meetings and do that work.  Yet that will inevitably leave you feeling less in control of your time. Particularly if you use one of those AI-enabled calendars that suggest when you should be doing something.  What happens if you disagree with the suggestion, or you cannot make it? You feel guilty, or you start to think something is wrong with you.  Yet, there's nothing wrong with you. You're human, and you are going to feel tired sometimes or not in the mood to do that type of work.  The one area I would say you want to avoid AI getting involved in is how you manage your time. That should always be your responsibility and choice.  The idea that a computer tells you what to do and where to be is scary. Deciding what you do right now is what makes you human. You've chosen to listen to this podcast at this time. AI would likely tell you that, rather than listening to this podcast, you should be finishing that report you've been trying to finish all week. I also read about the excitement over the idea that AI could reply to your emails for you. Hmm, for me, that is a red line I will not cross.  Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that if someone has taken the time to write to me, I have an obligation to reply personally. That is just basic integrity. Now, it is true I don't reply to all emails. I don't respond to spam emails; for example, I simply delete them if they get through. How hard is that?  I'm fortunate that I'm old enough to remember several technological advancements. It started with the Internet, then email, the smartphone and cloud computing.  I cannot remember a technology being forced upon us, but it feels like AI is being forced on us, whether we like it or not.  And then there are the frightening ads that claim if you are not on board with using AI, you will be left on the career scrap heap by the end of the year. Nobody needed to do that with smartphones or email.  Companies, focused on making the technology user-friendly in such a way that we all wanted to adopt it eventually. The fear-mongering I see around AI makes me deeply suspicious of it. Why do they need to do that?  Perhaps that question is for people better qualified than I am.  Anyway, AI is here, and it's not going to go away.  Where I think AI will be a huge help to us is in repetitive, mundane work. I mentioned that I use AI to create subtitles and timestamps for my YouTube videos. That's been a huge time saver for me.  But if you follow my email processing system, you will find that you are faster than AI. I can clear 80 emails in my inbox in less than 10 minutes. It's also important that I do this, as I want to get a heads-up on my day. To know if there are any emergencies, what I want to read later and what I can delete.  What AI would do is categorise your emails between what it thinks is important and what is not. Trust me, you will do a far better Job of that than AI will.  The problem here is that you will not trust AI 100%, so you will still go through the emails it thinks are not important, just to check that it got it right.  And that's a big problem with AI today, although I accept that in time this may change; people don't trust it, which is a good thing, as AI can hallucinate and give you incorrect information. This means you spend time coming up with the right prompt, get the answer, and then have to check that it's correct.  The question then is: did it really save you time?  I am monitoring AI carefully. I know that in time, it will bring us some productivity benefits, new technologies always do. But there are a few areas where I won't use AI personally.  Writing emails and answering user comments. That's a personal integrity thing to me. Your principles should tell you that.  Managing my calendar. That's another personal thing, and giving control to any outside influence would always be problematic at a human level.  Creating content. If you've read an AI-generated blog post or watched an AI-created YouTube video, you can tell. Large Language Models will always default to the average, not just in the content, but in the words used. It's horrible, and nothing unique will ever come from it.  And finally, deciding what I will do at a task level and when. That's another one that, as a human, I will retain control. I had scheduled to write this podcast script at 11:30 today, but I had a cancellation at 8:00 am, so I switched things around.  I could have gone back to bed, but I felt great, so I decided to get on with this podcast script. My choice, made in the moment.  Thank you, Chris, for your question and thank you to you, too, for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

Steve Jobs once said, “Deciding what NOT to do is as important as deciding what TO do”, and that quote has been, and still is, a cornerstone of my whole time management and productivity philosophy.  Today, I answer a question about dealing with all the little things that pop up each day while staying focused on what is important.  Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   The Ultimate Productivity Workshop  The Hybrid Productivity Course  Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 406 Hello, and welcome to the real episode 406 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. (Apologies for the incorrect numbering last week) 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 happens when your productivity system collapses? Do you go looking for new apps, or do you give up and just think you're not the organised type or lack self-discipline?  People react in many different ways when their systems become backlogged and overwhelmed, yet this is a state that will happen to all of us from time to time.  Life has a bad habit of getting in the way. It throws up all sorts of problems to test us. No one week or even a day will ever be the same. Only five minutes ago, my plan to take Louis out for our walk at 2:00 pm was changed by my wife asking if we could go at 12:30. That way, I could pick her up from her dance class and then go to the reservoir for his walk.  And that was a small change.  These little things are hitting us every day and disrupting our systems, yet that doesn't mean our systems are broken. It just means we need to ensure that we have sufficient buffer and flexibility built in. This week's question is all about what to do when, for whatever reason, your system begins to collapse, and you have backlogs of work, emails, messages and commitments, and you have no idea how to regain control.  Now, before I hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice, just a heads up to say if you are considering joining next week's Ultimate Productivity Workshop, there are only seven days left before the first session.  The workbook will be going out next week, and I would love for you to join me. This is your opportunity to get to grips with the COD and Time Sector Systems, where you can ask questions and come away with not only the knowledge, but with a rock solid system that is flexible, automatic and leaves you with enough time for the things you want to do.  PLUS, you also get, for free, four of my courses to help you go deeper in your own time.  I will put the details in the show notes, and I hope to see you next Sunday.  Now, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question.  This week's question comes from Nick. Nick asks, “ Hi Carl, all my professional life I have tried to be organised and focused, but every time I feel I have found the solution, something happens either at work or at home that destroys my plans. How do you suggest someone go about dealing with disruptions all the time?  Great question, Nick, and thank you for sending it in.  Much of what causes us these issues has little to do with our systems. It's just life getting in the way.  Yet, what we are aiming to do is turn managing our time into a routine. Something we just do.  For instance, I would feel uncomfortable going to bed not knowing what my appointments and important tasks are for the next day. It doesn't take long—five minutes tops —but most days it's likely less than two minutes.  This is why I cannot get my head around it when people tell me they are too exhausted to plan the next day. It's no more than five minutes! You only need to know when and where your appointments are and what your one or two most important tasks are. It takes a minuscule amount of energy to do it.  Those two minutes have a profound effect on my day.  Last night, I went to bed knowing that I had six hours of meetings today and one critical task to do. I knew if I was diligent, I would be able to complete my meetings and that one task.  The fact that my wife has already changed my plan has not caused me to drop the task. My original plan to do it after my morning calls finished has changed. I will now do it when I get back from taking Louis for his walk.  What matters is that when I finish today, I can look back knowing I have what matters done.  This all begins with respecting the basics. Those basics are contained in COD. Collect, Organise and Do.  You need a way to collect everything that comes your way throughout the day. This needs to be something you trust. That could be a task manager or a daybook (a notebook you use to manage your day).  Then, at some point in the day, you process and organise what you collected. That could be the first thing in the morning or the last thing you do before you finish your workday. If you're doing it every day, you won't need a lot of time for this part of the process.  If you're inconsistent with it, you will need more time. This is why I suggested you turn these things into routines—things you just do every day. Like brushing your teeth when you wake up, or washing the dishes before you go to bed.  Finally, the daily planning, where you decide which tasks you must do that day and review your calendar for the next day's appointments. These steps give you a clear plan for doing the work.  The great thing is that none of these steps takes a lot of time. Perhaps the processing and organising will take about 10 minutes. However, I find that this step is calming. It allows me to ensure I am not trying to do too much or limiting my flexibility.  So, step one, Nick, is to make following the principles of COD a non-negotiable part of your day.  For those of you who have not discovered COD yet, I have a free 45-minute course that walks you through the process and shows you the tools and formulas to build this into your day. I will leave the link in the show notes. The next consideration is how you are organising your work.  There are some things that need to be done every day. Responding to your actionable messages (email, Slack, Teams, etc.) and any daily admin, for example. Salespeople often need to record their daily activities. Now you could do this once a week or do it daily. I find that doing it daily keeps the time required to a minimum.  Then there are your tasks. Now, some of these may need to be done today or before the end of the week. Others may not be quite as urgent, so you can push them out of sight until next week or even next month.  This is why I recommend you organise your task manager by when you will do something. Anything that needs to be done this week goes into a folder called “this week”. This means you are not being distracted by tasks that don't need to be done this week, and it helps to keep your task list to a minimum. This prevents your lists from becoming overwhelming.  The other good thing about this approach is that the 40% of the tasks you think you will need to do that never actually need to be done can be deleted during your weekly planning. (That's one of my favourite parts of doing the weekly planning) This is the essence of the Time Sector System. It's not about how much you have to do; we all have far more to do than the time available to do it. It's about when you will do it.  There are two sides to the time management equation. Time and stuff to do. The time side of the equation is fixed. You cannot change that. There are 24 hours a day and 168 hours a week, and that's it.  The only variable you have is stuff to do. That's what the Time Sector System focuses on. Getting you to decide what you will do and when.  I can now give you an update on my changing day.  When I started today, I had three meetings between 8:00 and 11:30 am.  It's now 10:30 am, as I write this, and my 8:00 am meeting went ahead as usual, but my 9:30 and 10:30 meetings have both cancelled.  When I planned my day yesterday, I accounted for all my meetings going ahead, and I would write this script before taking Louis for his walk. I would start the script between 8:00 am and 9:30 am, and then finish it after all my meetings ended.  I've been given 90 minutes back, so this script will be finished before I pick my wife up from her dance class. It also means I can work on an important project this afternoon, which I thought I wouldn't have much time for.  Some days you win, others you have to fight for. Today's a win. On the days you have to fight for it's important to stand your ground as much as you can. For example, had all my meetings gone ahead as expected today, I would still have had time this afternoon to write this script.  The consequences of not protecting time to write this script would be squeezing my day tomorrow, and I would likely have to work on Saturday just to catch up.  I've played that game too often in the past, and it's not worth it.  It would be tempting to blame my system, but ultimately, my decisions would have caused the problem.  So, as you can see, Nick, life will always get in the way. You can only work with the information in front of you.  But if you are consistent with your daily and weekly planning, you are putting yourself in a position to be clear about what matters each day.  Yet, your daily and weekly planning only works if you are collecting everything that needs to be collected. Appointments are on your calendar, and tasks are in a task manager. That way, you will have all the information you need to plan your days so that the important things get done, and the lower-value ones can be eliminated.  And finally, you can avoid many issues by building buffer time into your calendar. Trying to squeeze in as many meetings as you can without allowing at least 15 minutes between them is storing up problems for you later.  I try to set aside 2 hours for focused work each day and 2 hours of buffer time for the unexpected. I've found over the years that on most days, that's enough to give me the flexibility to deal with whatever comes my way.  So Nick, it comes down to following the principles of COD. Collect everything that needs to be collected. Allow yourself ten to fifteen minutes each day to process and organise what you collected. Decide when you will do the tasks, and use your daily and weekly planning sessions to map out your days so you are getting the right things done at the right time.  I hope that helps.  Now, don't forget, if you want to learn how to put all this together, have me show you how to manage your calendar and task manager and stay of top of your communications, then my Ultimate Productivity Workshop will do that for you.  And don't worry if you cannot attend all the sessions (there are only two). Both sessions will be recorded, and the video and audio files will be available shortly after the end of each session.  I hope you can join me. Details for this fantastic workshop are in the show notes. Thank you, Nick, for your question, and thank you to you, too, for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

It's Your Time

“If everything's important, then nothing is important”. You've probably heard that many times. Yet, are you guilty of ignoring it?  In today's episode, I share with you a few ideas on how to best prioritise your days.  Links: Email Me | Twitter | Fac ebook | Website | Linkedin   The Ultimate Productivity Workshop  The Hybrid Productivity Course    Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 405 Hello, and welcome to the real episode 405 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. (Apologies for the incorrect numbering last week) 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 many overdue flagged tasks do you have in your task manager? If you're like most people, you will have quite a few.  The question is: why are they overdue? You made a conscious decision that these tasks were important, but then did not do them when you wanted to do them. This is something I struggled with for years. I would add flags to anything I felt was important, then completely ignore them throughout my day. It wasn't until I realised I was making a mistake and diminishing the power that flags give me, that I changed my approach. Over the last few weeks, I've seen this coming up in a lot of my coaching sessions, where I notice overdue flagged tasks cluttering things up and becoming a distraction to the user.  The other issue here is that overdue flagged tasks cause an increase in anxiety. You flagged them because they were important or urgent, and now you have a long list of such tasks. Where do you start to get them under control?  Now, before I hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question, if you've been waiting for the 2026 Ultimate Productivity Workshop, then the wait's over. Coming on the 8th and 15th of March, join me live for a festival of productivity. Featuring the COD foundation, the Time Sector System, and how to get on top of your backlogs and so much more, including the DPS (daily Planning Sequence and the WPM (weekly Planning Matrix).  Places are limited, so get yourself registered today. Full details are in the show notes.  And now it's time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice. This week's question comes from Caroline. Caroline asks, “ Hi Carl, I've recently cleaned up my Todoist, and as I was doing so, I found a lot of flagged tasks that I had ignored. These are important tasks, and I don't want to remove the flag. But it's become so overwhelming. What's the best way to use flags, in your opinion?  Hi Caroline, thank you for your question.  As a Todoist user, you have many options for your flags. There are technically four flags. P1 (red), P2 (orange), P3 (blue) and P4 (white). The P4 flag isn't really a flag, since all tasks default to it. With these flags, there are many ways you can organise them. However, you do need one of them to be your priority flag.  When I say “priority flag,” this is the one you use when a task absolutely must be done on the day it was assigned.  Logically, you would use the P1 red flag for that.  Now, this is where many people go wrong.  It's very tempting to add a flag to a task long before it is due. The feeling is that if the task is important, it will still be important on the day you plan to do it.  Not true. Priorities change.  You plan to finish a proposal for your most important client on Thursday, but that morning, your daughter has a serious asthma attack, and you are now in the emergency room of your local hospital. Where's your priority now?  Okay, I know that example is a little extreme, but those things happen.  Priorities also change throughout the week. That important client may tell you the proposal is on hold for a few months, so there is no urgency. But new priorities will come along, don't you worry.  This is why adding your flags should be done at a daily planning level.  Now I will caveat that.  There are times when I know something will be the priority for the day. The script for this podcast, for instance, is today's priority. I knew that when I planned the week, and I flagged it. It doesn't matter what other things pop up through the week; when it comes to writing this script, it's the priority for the day.  Your core work will always be a priority. This is why I have people spend time working out what their core work is. After all, your core work is the reason you are employed. If you didn't do your core work consistently, you would not have a job for very long.  Even retired people need to consider what their core activities will be each day.  I'm reminded of this following a conversation I had with my father-in-law over the weekend. We've just had the lunar New Year here in Korea, and my parents-in-law stayed with us over the holiday.  During that time, my father-in-law mentioned he planned to hang up his silicone gun and tiling trowel at the end of the year. He fits bathrooms and was thinking about what he would do when he no longer needs to wake up at 5:00 am each morning.  The first thing I said was that he needs to prioritise exercise. His job ensures he's getting plenty of exercise. Walking up and down stairs carrying sinks, shower kits and tiles is hard physical work. His job currently ensures he's getting his exercise.  The moment he stops doing that five days a week, he will need to find a replacement activity to prevent muscle loss.  Losing his muscle mass will lead to him losing his independence very quickly.  We all have priorities that recur. Those tasks can be pre-flagged. They are critical, whether you are working or retired. Having a few tasks already prioritised helps you plan the day, since you can decide whether they will be the priority or not. Let me explain.  All of us are limited by the same thing each day. Time. It's the one thing none of us can change. Writing this podcast script takes about 2 to 2.5 hours. That eats a big chunk of my work time each week.  At the same time, we all have to deal with communications, meetings, admin and other day-to-day tasks. I need to include an hour each day for taking Louis for his walk, and next week, he also has a grooming appointment, which will take time out of my week.  Looking at next week's calendar today, I can see where my appointments are and already guess which tasks will be a priority. When I do my weekly planning, I pre-flag what I think will be the priority for each day, but I am aware that when I do daily planning, I may need to change it. There has to be a degree of flexibility.  It could be that I get an email on Monday asking for a proposal to work with a company and design a workshop for them. That would become a priority for that week.  I would add a task, “Begin work on company workshop”, and schedule it. Yet, I would not flag it then. When the day comes, and I do my daily planning, I then get to see the real landscape of my day.  It could be that I have five hours of meetings that day and two or three pre-planned, prioritised tasks. Now I have to make a decision. What is my REAL priority that day?  If I have promised to get the workshop outline to the client by the end of the week, that will be my red-flagged task that day. I made a promise, and I will deliver on that promise.  Given that I have five hours of meetings and need two hours to put together the outline and proposal, there's not going to be much time left for anything else that day. I need to re-prioritise my day.  So I add the flag to the workshop's proposal and decide on what needs to be rescheduled.  It's likely that, in that given scenario, I would not flag anything else. I know I don't have time to do much else.  This is why daily and weekly planning complement each other. The weekly plan is about setting yourself objectives. The daily plan is about ensuring you prioritise your day so you work towards meeting those objectives—given the new information, ie, new tasks that will inevitably come in.  Now I know many of you will add a flag to a task because you keep rescheduling it and just do not want to spend the time doing it. The thinking goes that if you flag it, you will do the task. Hmmm, how often does that work?  This is often the reason many flagged tasks become overdue. The only change is that the task now has a flag. Yet you still don't want to spend the time doing it. When you use your daily planning time to prioritise your day, you're using real, up-to-date information to guide you. You can remove flags from tasks you thought were important but are no longer, and add a flag to the tasks that are important that day.  I mentioned that you can pre-prioritise your week by flagging tasks at the weekly planning session. When you do the daily planning, you decide if your priorities have changed and, if so, remove flags or reschedule those tasks.  What I like about this approach is that it feels like your task manager is supporting you rather than the other way around. You retain control over what you will and will not do each day.  This works particularly well if you find yourself behind on something or have a backlog that needs dealing with. When you plan the day, you get to decide what to place on your task list and in what order. Now, how many flags should you allow each day? Several years ago, I decided to find out how many tasks I could consistently do each day for a week. I began with fifteen and soon discovered that if I wanted to be consistent, then that number was ten.  This number does not include routine tasks such as cleaning my actionable email, my daily admin tasks and the usual things we all have to do at work each day.  When it came to flagged tasks, I soon discovered that I could consistently do two important tasks a day. When I tried three or more, I frequently was unable to do one of them. I just ran out of time.  And so, my 2+8 Prioritisation Method was born.  This method forces you to realistically prioritise your day. You can choose only two must-do tasks for the day. These are flagged. The remaining eight are not flagged, and you will do what you can to clear that list each day.  This method works because it introduces constraints into your system.  Given that it's human nature to want to do more than we can realistically do each day, adding this constraint of no more than ten tasks per day ensures you are picking the genuinely important tasks.  No, that interesting YouTube video is not important. You can watch that any time. But renewing your father's prescription for him is.  Checking your car's tyre pressures before you head out on a long road trip this afternoon will be a priority over reading that article your colleague sent you.  I have my Todoist set up so I can see my red-flagged tasks each day using a filter. That filter is “today & P1”.  Each morning, before I begin my day, that's the first place I go. I review my flagged tasks and remove any excess.  This has taught me to become ruthlessly competent at prioritising.  Strangely, this goes back to something I learned in my teenage years. In Hyrum Smith's Ten Natural Laws of Time and Life Management, he writes about establishing your governing values. Today. I think of these as my Areas of Focus.  These governing values are the predetermined priorities in your life. Often, family will be at the top of that list. The idea is that your governing values have a natural prioritised list. For example, if your family's well-being is above your career, if your family needs you to do something, that will be prioritised over your work commitments.  For me, my health and fitness is above my work in my list of areas of focus. This means I will not schedule meetings at 4:30 pm. That's my exercise time. I will not do any work at that time either. At 4:30 pm, I exercise.  So there you go, Caroline. I hope that has helped. The key is to prioritise your day during your daily planning and use that time to reset your flags so nothing is ever overdue.  And above all, respect your flags. If you know you will not be doing a flagged task on any given day. Either reschedule the task or remove the flag.  Thank you for your question, and thank you to you too for listening.  It just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

Music reaches your brain fast! It activates memory, movement, emotion, and connection in seconds.In this episode, host Dr. Krystal L. Culler, DBH, MA, sat down with Shannon Wallace, CDP, CDC, creator of Musical Memory Care to explore how music functions as a whole-brain and body workout. We focus on one powerful idea—the “time of your life” effect.Research shows the music you loved between roughly ages 13 and 27 leaves a lasting imprint. Those songs shape identity. They anchor memory. They often remain accessible even during cognitive change.Shannon shares how she moved from professional jazz vocalist to serving older adults in memory care communities. What began as singing for residents evolved into an intentional, research-informed program that integrates rhythm, movement, emotional expression, and identity support.We explore:Why time-of-life music remains accessible in dementia How music activates the limbic system and supports emotional regulation The role of rhythm in movement, including Parkinson's support Why intentional facilitation matters in memory care settings How music supports dignity, identity, and human connection Practical ways you can use music today for brain healthYou will hear real-world stories from Shannon's work in memory care. Stories of individuals who had not spoken in years yet responded to music. Stories of rhythm supporting walking and daily tasks. Stories that reinforce this truth. Music is not entertainment alone. It is a neurological tool.If you are a caregiver, clinician, or family member supporting someone with cognitive change, this conversation gives you some practical suggestions. Play their music, not yours. Use rhythm to support movement. Build playlists rooted in their adolescence and young adulthood. Intention matters.If you are focused on your own brain health, start here:Create a “time of your life” playlist Use music to regulate mood and stress Pair rhythm with movement for exercise Share meaningful songs to deepen social connectionMusic does not require perfection. It asks for presence.About Shannon Wallace, CDP, CDC Shannon Wallace is a professional international jazz vocalist and the creator of Musical Memory Care, an interactive program serving active older adults and individuals living with all stages of dementia. Her work has reached participants across North America and in more than 40 countries. She is a Certified Dementia Practitioner and Dementia Care Certified professional who integrates music, movement, and compassion into structured memory care experiences.Brain health lives in daily moments. Music is one of the most accessible tools you already have.00:00 Why Music Hits Fast: A Whole Brain + Body Workout00:49 Meet Shannon Wallace & the Musical Memory Care Mission02:23 The Grant Question That Changed Everything (Volunteering in Memory Care)05:48 Music Like Fitness: Intentionality, Regulation, and Engagement08:09 Your “Time of Life” Music Bump: Why Certain Songs Stick Forever11:41 Music for Mood & Nervous System Regulation (Limbic System, Empathy, Shifting State)15:10 Why Music Still Connects in Dementia—and the Need for Intentional Care20:45 Inside the Musical Memory Care Program: Reading the Room + Multi-Sensory Design23:32 Proof in Practice: Vivian Speaks Again & Building Trust Through Personal Connection29:28 Try This at Home: Playlists, Movement, Sharing Songs + Parkinson's Rhythm Hack36:24 Closing Wisdom: Work-Life Balance, Where to Find Shannon, and Final TakeawaysResourcesDownload the free infographic on how music is a whole brain-body workout!Learn more about Shannon and her Musical Memory Care™ program on her website. Connect with Shannon on LinkedIn or her professional website for her vocal talent or speaking.Listen to our previous podcast conversation with Eyleen Braaten, Executive Director of the Giving Voice Chorus and Neuroscientist, Dr. Patricia Izbicki, Ph.D., to learn how singing can impact your brain. 

Podcast 405 "Pen and paper will solve almost anything. Or at least start the process." - Nicholas Bate This week, I have a special episode for you about what I have discovered over the last two years from bringing pens and paper back into my productivity system. It's certainly been an eye-opener for me.    Links: Email Me | Twitter | Fac ebook | Website | Linkedin   The Hybrid Productivity Course    Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 405 Hello, and welcome to episode 405 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 week ago, I launched a brand new course called the Hybrid Productivity Course. The purpose of this course was to help those who have found that a digital-only approach has led to a loss of focus on what's important and a sense of extreme overwhelm and distraction.  As in most areas of life, a one-size-fits-all methodology rarely works. All humans are unique. We think differently, have different life experiences, grow up differently and experience life through many different cultures.  It stands to reason that none of us will have exactly the same needs as everyone else.  We saw this during the pandemic. Around 50% of people loved working from home. They thrived and became much more productive. The other 50% struggled, found it hard to do their work, and lost their enthusiasm and energy for it.  This highlighted the difference between extroverts and introverts. Extroverts bounce off the energy of other people. They need the bustling office environment to operate. Take that away, and they slump.  Introverts, on the other hand, thrive in the opposite conditions. Quiet spaces and solo environments are where they thrive.  I always struggled in an office environment. I found it difficult to concentrate and focus. When I began working from home in 2015, my productivity went through the roof. I suddenly had the freedom to work when I liked, where I liked and in the quiet solitude of my front living room.  One advantage of an all-digital system is that you can easily add many features to your digital tools without much thought.  I noticed this while testing Todoist's new feature, Ramble. Ramble lets you have a conversation with Todoist, and it pulls out all the things you indicate need to be done. Sounds great in theory, until you test it out.  Just a two-minute “conversation” with Ramble led to 15 tasks!  When I went back into my inbox to sort them out, I realised that the majority of those tasks were low-value, would-be-nice-to-do tasks, but realistically, there was no way I would have the time to do them.  I edited down that list of 15 to 6 tasks.  The problem is that most people will not edit these lists. It's time-consuming, and you have to think it through. Two things that are out of fashion these days, it seems. This is where I found bringing a pen and notebook back into my system really helped. It forced me to edit down my list of tasks for the day. It also made me smarter when writing my lists.  If I had five people to call today, in the digital system, I would write out all five calls independently. It didn't take long, and most of those would already be in the digital system. All I had to do was add a date.  In a paper system, it would mean writing out all those calls individually. You soon find that rather than doing that, you would write “do my calls”. Writing those three words strangely reinforced the action. All you then needed to do was to ensure that any communication tasks were correctly labelled in your digital system.  This is where the seeds of a hybrid system began to take shape.  If it were easier to collect using digital tools, then why stop doing it that way? If you were more focused when writing out a daily to-do list than using a digital to-do list, why stop doing that?  My idea was to marry the two.  This led to the development of what I call my Day Book. However, before I got there, I went back to my roots and used the Franklin Planner for eighteen months.  The strength of the Franklin Planner is in the way the daily pages are laid out. You have your daily prioritised task list on the left, your calendar for the day next to it, and, on the right page, a place to keep notes and ideas.  This means that once you have written your appointments, you can see how much time you have available to do tasks. It forces you to be realistic.  If you had seven hours of meetings and began writing out a long list of tasks, you would instantly see that you were creating an impossible day.  If you were to consider meeting overruns, the “urgent” messages and “quick questions” that will inevitably come your way that day, it's likely you won't be doing any tasks.  Yet the digital system won't show you that. All it shows you are the tasks you have dated for today.  And let's be honest, most people are adding dates to tasks, not because they need to be done that day, but because they are afraid they will forget about them or they will get lost in the system.  That's not how a to-do list is meant to work. It's meant to give you a clear indication of what needs to be done. On a day-to-day basis, that means what needs to be done today.  The act of writing down on a piece of paper the tasks that need to be done today forces you to be realistic.  When it comes to storage, though, paper is not so great. It's here where digital tools shine. You can easily store files and documents. You can keep meeting notes together in one place and create a master project note for all your projects, so everything is kept together in one convenient place.  And of course, digital's piece de resistance, search.  If you were to keep all your notes in notebooks, you would soon have notebooks all over the place, and notes would be difficult to find unless you carefully indexed every notebook you used. Perhaps not the best use of your time.  Instead, you can keep all your notes in a notes app, and allow it to use keywords, date ranges or titles to find what you need when you need it.  However, I have discovered that paper is a great planning medium. This is where I always used to struggle.  When I first began teaching, there were no such things as Evernote or Apple Notes. They didn't come along until five years after I began teaching. I therefore used my old counsel notebooks. These were what would be described as foolscap in size, slightly taller than A4, and had a royal blue cover.  Given that throughout my school and university days, I would always plan out my essays on paper, it was perfectly natural for me to make notes on paper when planning my lessons. Then we had the digital explosion. Smartphones became a thing, followed shortly afterwards by apps. I began using Evernote in 2009, and I started planning digitally.  It was certainly convenient, but I did notice I rarely went into any depth. I tried using mind-mapping software, but it didn't help.  I thought there must be something wrong with me.  Then, a couple of years ago, I began seeing studies about how our brains work differently between digital and physical tools.  The most striking studies found that when you write on paper (or a whiteboard), you activate the same areas that artists activate when creating art. This is the creative centre of your brain.  When you tap on a keyboard, you don't. Tapping is formulaic and monotonous. If you think about this, it makes perfect sense. When you handwrite, you are forming shapes. Letters are shapes. When you write via keyboard, all you are doing is tapping. There's nothing artistic about that.  This was when the penny finally dropped for me. There was nothing wrong with me! It was science.  Now, I would never consider opening up my phone or laptop to sketch out an idea. I would open a notebook.  One of my favourite ways of doing this is to grab a notebook, a few pens and a pencil and head off to a local cafe for an hour or two. I can sit in a corner and brainstorm ideas for new courses, YouTube videos and blog posts.  Since I began doing this, my productivity has improved significantly. It helped because I have fewer re-edits to do. When I sit down at the computer to write, I now have a fully planned-out structure and well-thought-through points, and I am writing the first draft much faster. It seems that planning works best on paper, yet storage and output are best digital. Again, leading to the conclusion that there is a place for both digital and analogue tools in a solid productivity system.  I saw this all in action recently. I was watching a UK Supreme Court session, where a barrister (a lawyer who speaks before a judge, not someone who makes coffee) had an iPad in front of him containing all the case files and documents. Yet his speaking notes were on paper. As he made his arguments before the judge, he marked off the points with a pencil and added notes.  The opposing barrister was also using the same tools. Her case files were on an iPad, yet as she listened to her opposite number, she was taking notes in a notebook and appeared to be adding revisions to her own speaking notes.  What's more, if we're being honest, stationery is much more fun than digital tools. Digital fonts, screens and keyboards are not really all that exciting.  But the many different types of pens, pencils, notebooks, and pencil cases at all different price ranges give you the ultimate way to make your tools truly personal.  I'm sure you already know I love fountain pens. I've been writing with them since middle school and just love the way the nib feels on a quality sheet of paper.  I remember being excited when Apple brought out the Apple Pencil. When I got one, and tried it out I was horrified. It was the worst writing experience I'd ever had. I've tried Paperlike and tested a Remarkable. Yuk! None of them comes close to the experience you get from a real pen and paper.  And so, after two years of testing, playing and refining, I came up with what I would describe as the “perfect” system. A method that marries the power of digital with analogue tools.  Digital for storage and output, paper for planning and thinking.  It works. I tested it with some of my coaching clients, and even my wife has started using it for her university studies.  What's more, it works superbly with the Time Sector System. You keep all your tasks in your digital task manager, and only when you decide to do them, you put them on paper.  What you will discover immediately is that you are no longer staring at an almost infinite list of things you could do, and instead, you see a list of genuine tasks that need to be done today. No more overwhelm, just a focused list and a realistic day.  If you are interested in learning more about this course, I will put a link in the show notes. Currently, you can get the course with the early-bird discount for just $49.95.  But if you're not interested, try using a notebook for your planning and daily task list this week. Watch what happens to your productivity.  Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

In this episode, we are joined by Executive Coach and Leadership Strategist Arivee Vargas to help high-achievers transition from fear-based habits to purpose-led leadership. She breaks down the common patterns that keep women playing small—including people-pleasing and perfecting—and introduces a transformative framework designed to foster deep self-trust and personal alignment.Tune in to learn:How to break free from the exhausting internal and external pressure to have it all together and the fear of not being enough.The secrets to identifying the 5P patterns of high performance—Pressure, People-Pleasing, Perfecting, Proving, and Performing—that often stem from a childhood need for compliance.How to replace fear-based habits with a framework built on Purpose, Priorities, Presence, Power, and Permission.Practical ways to use journaling and micro-decisions to honestly name your struggles and start leading a life that feels full and alive.Through honest self-reflection and Arivee's expert guidance, you will learn how to stop pretending and start leading with sustainable high performance. Free Gift: Boundary ToolkitGrab your FREE Boundary Toolkit: 3 Proven Strategies to protect your time, reclaim your energy, and feel more in control at work and in life. Perfect for anyone done with depletion and ready to lead from a place of clarity and intention.Arivee's Giveaway Contribution: Bestselling Book Your Time To RiseEnter to a win a copy of Arivee's book, Your Time to Rise: Unlearn Limiting Beliefs, Unlock Your Power and Unleash Your Truest Self! Connect with Arivee: Website | Podcast | Instagram---Enter the Book Launch Celebration Giveaway!

It's a fact that love is spelled T.I.M.E. .... In today's workplace, we can get so caught up in the fast pace that we forget that as Christ followers, we're to be mindful and intentional with every task, and every person. How DO you slow down during the workday?  One good way is to STOP multitasking, and focus your FULL attention on each task and conversation at a time. Another great way is to use a Prayer Prompter app on your phone that can remind you to: pray, give thanks, to ask for wisdom and discernment, and to be AWARE of the needs around you. We are called to LOVE our neighbors (which are our co-workers).  How well are YOU showing love to YOUR co-workers with YOUR TIME?

Peter Drucker once said “Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else”  How is your management of time?  Links: Email Me | Twitter | Fac ebook | Website | Linkedin   The Time-Based Productivity Course    Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 403 Hello, and welcome to episode 403 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.  Are you in danger of boxing yourself in with too many processes and too much structure?  Now, it's important to stress that having some structure to your day is important. But too much can lead to boxing yourself in and losing flexibility.  Let me give you an example I often come across. Protecting time for doing your focused work. Having this protected on your calendar so the time cannot be stolen by others is important.  If you protected 2 hours and finished in 90 minutes, that doesn't mean you have to continue for another 30 minutes. Take a break. You're done.  But this works the other way, too. If you have two hours protected for a project task but cannot finish it in that time. It's okay. You turned up. You did the work, but you miscalculated how long it would take.  This happens to all of us. Some days we're on fire and can plough through a lot of work. Other days, a lot less so.  The problem is that when you begin your day, you really don't know what kind of day you're going to have. There are too many variables. How you slept, whether you're catching a cold or simply something else is on your mind.  Your life is not measured by what you do in one day; everyone has bad days.  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 Alex. Alex asks, hi Carl, this year I'm trying to be better at time blocking, but I am really struggling to stay consistent with my blocks. What advice do you have to help stay true to your calendar?  Hi Alex, thank you for your question. Something I have always taught is that of all your productivity tools, one of them needs to be sacred. One of your tools must be the “truth” about what you are going to do that day.  Task managers are generally not good at this because we throw a lot of things into them. That's a good thing. Yet, the issue is that most people never curate what they throw in. This creates overwhelming lists of low-value, ill-thought-out items that will never get done. They just cripple your task manager's effectiveness.  The best tool for acting as your sacred base is your calendar. It's never going to lie to you. It shows you the 24 hours you have each day and where you need to be, with whom, and when.  You cannot overload yourself without it being plainly obvious that you are trying to do too much. And let's be perfectly clear, an agreed appointment with someone will always take priority over an email or proposal you need to write. If not, you cancel the appointment.  I hope, at a basic, civilised human being level, you get that.  I've called off face-to-face meetings in the past if the person I am meeting cannot put their phones down and actually talk to me. It is rude, disrespectful, and no person with an ounce of integrity would ever do that.  One of the striking things I've noticed about the highly successful people I work with is that they never have a phone. Tablet or laptop near them when they are in meetings. A notebook and a pen are all they have.  That's focus, professionalism, and demonstrates to the person you are meeting that you are focused on them in that moment.  When you make your calendar your primary productivity tool, you gain clarity about how much time you have available for the things you want to do.  It's visual, it's staring at you, and there's no escape from reality.  If you work 9 hours a day and today you have 7 hours of meetings, you only have 2 hours to do solo work. That's it.  If you need three hours to get your critical, must-do work done, then you have two choices. You either cancel a meeting or you accept that you will need to work an extra hour.  It's strange how so many people waste so much time trying find other solutions. That's time they could have spent on getting started on the work.  The solution is to time-block slots for doing the work that matters. The best salespeople block time every day to prospect and follow up with their customers. That's why they are the top salespeople. The best CEOs block time every day for working on their top priority task. That's why they are the best at what they do. Best-selling authors block time for writing every day. That's why they sell a lot of books.  Now, as I eluded to at the beginning, there will be some days when things don't go according to plan. You might be sick, had an argument with a loved one or just be distracted for whatever reason.  Or there could be a good old-fashioned emergency that needs your attention.  It happens. That's life.  However, it's not really about what you do or not to do in one day. The purpose of time blocks is to get you to show up and do the work. It's not about volume.  Spending twenty minutes on your actionable email is better than spending zero minutes. It's surprising how much you can get done when the pressure of time is on you. You don't dilly-dally around. (Wow! That's a phrase I haven't used for a long time!)  Ultimately, the measure is how well you did against your plan for the week, not necessarily an individual day.  Let me give you an example.  I have two blog posts, two newsletters, this podcast and a YouTube video to produce each week. They are my measurables. Six pieces of content. I know I need about 12 hours a week to produce that content. I also have 15 hours of coaching appointments. So, in total, I need 27 hours protected before I begin my week to complete my professional work.  It's doable, and based on my completion rates, I complete this work around 87% of the time over 12 months. I'll take that. (I measure it at the end of every year)  I work with one highly successful CEO who writes a LinkedIn Newsletter every week. Her company has over 50,000 employees in six different countries. She protects two hours every week to write that newsletter. One hour for the first draft and one hour later in the week to edit it.  Last year, she didn't miss one newsletter. She had a 100% completion rate. And that was her goal.  How did she do it? She protected her writing time every week. She would protect Monday mornings when in the office, and when travelling, she would take advantage of jet lag and write when she was wide awake in the early morning or late at night.  She time-blocked the time. She knew the only way to achieve a 100% completion rate was to make sure each week she had protected the time to do the work.  However, time blocking only works if you are planning your week. Not planning your week leaves you open to other people hijacking your calendar, and as I am sure you are aware, other people are often very persuasive… or demanding.  When you sit down to plan the week, you first look at what meetings and appointments you have scheduled. How much time does that leave you?  That will tell you what you could realistically get done that week.  If you're away at a conference for three days, you really only have two days to work with. However, one of those days will probably be needed for catching up, so realistically, you've got one solid work day.  But let's look at a typical week when you are at your usual place of work.  How much time do you need to do the work you are employed to do each week? A journalist may be expected to write an article a week. How long does it typically take to write the article, excluding the research and interviews? That would be their starting point.  Doctors I work with often need 2 hours or more after seeing patients to handle paperwork. If they want to get home at 7:00 pm each evening, then that will affect the time they need to stop seeing patients and do paperwork.  Salespeople are focused on seeing clients most of the day, but they also often have paperwork and follow-ups to do. Where can they fit the time they need for paperwork and follow-ups? Knowing what you are expected to do as part of your job and ensuring you have sufficient time to do it each week is what I call protecting time for your core work, and it goes back to the birth of humankind. Our ancestors on the Savannahs knew their core work. To hunt for food. If they'd had a big kill one day, they may have been able to take a day off, but when they started their day, they knew their job was to go out and find food. It was a non-negotiable part of their day.  That's what time blocking does for you. It gives you clarity on what you need to do that day. All you need to do is show up.  One tip I can give you about time-blocking is to keep your time blocks general. For instance, the CEO I mentioned a moment ago calls her newsletter writing time simply “writing time”. That gives her some flexibility.  If she needs to write a report for the board and is up against a tight deadline, then that is what she will write in that time. She will then find another space for the newsletter writing. I do something similar. I have writing time and audio/visual time protected on my calendar. I can then choose what I write or record on the day as part of my daily planning routine.  If you're in sales or a client-facing role, the time you spend working for your clients can be called “client” or “customer” time. I would also highly recommend that you set aside time every day to deal with messages, emails, and admin. These tasks will creep up on you if you're not dealing with them every day. Even if you can only find thirty minutes, take it.  Whenever I am on a business trip, whether domestic or international, I make sure to set aside time during the day to address my actionable messages. The most challenging ones are domestic, as I generally drive to the appointment or event. The easier ones are international as there is a lot of time hanging around in airport lounges.  Another tip I would give is not to go crazy here. Time blocking is not about blocking every minute of the day. It's about protecting time only for the important work you need to do.  When I look at my calendar, there are only three hours a day protected for solo work. On days when I have a lot of meetings, I usually reduce that time to one hour.  So there you go, Alex. I hope that has helped.  You are going to have good and bad days. That's perfectly normal. But, you have complete control of your calendar, so you can move things around, change your blocks if necessary. But, and this is the important but, once you've locked them in for the day, you stick with them. Remember, it's not about how much you do in the time, it's about turning up and doing the work.  And if you want to transform your time management and adopt a sustainable time-based productivity system, my newest course, the Time-Based Productivity course, will do that for you.  It will teach you how to time-block effectively and organise your work so you are doing the right things at the right time. PLUS… by joining the course, you get free access to my recently updated Time Sector System course and my Time Blocking Course.  If I were to recommend one course for 2026, that's the one I would recommend.  Thank you for your question, Alex and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

You've probably heard of something called AI. It seems everyone is talking about it. The question is: how will this affect our productivity, and what can we do to ensure we are ready for the likely changes this year?  That's what I'm answering this week.  Links: Email Me | Twitter | Fac ebook | Website | Linkedin   Take the Time Sector System Course  Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 402 Hello, and welcome to episode 402 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.  Unless you've had the fortune to avoid seeing the news over the last few years, you may have come across something called AI. It seems to be everywhere today.  Just yesterday, I got a big update to Evernote, and it was all about AI. Todoist, my task manager of choice, is also on board with AI with their dictation tool called “Ramble”.  All great tools, all giving us the potential to collect and organise more.  I use AI a lot myself. It helps me brainstorm ideas, create subtitles for my YouTube videos, and write the video descriptions, which I hated doing myself.  And it is a phenomenal research tool. I can import my analytics from my blog, this podcast or my YouTube videos and ask it to tell me what is resonating with my community. Then that helps me to decide what the next best content will be.  Yet, with all this, there are some downsides. One of which is that I noticed last year that many of my coaching clients were seeing an increase in the number of tasks they had in their task managers.  It wasn't until recently that I realised where many of these tasks were coming from.  Many companies are rolling out AI-supported meeting summaries. AI is particularly good at this. It listens in to the meeting and, at the end, produces a summary of what was discussed and a list of action steps to be taken following the meeting. Some of the more sophisticated versions of this will break down by who is responsible for which task.  Superb! Or is it? What I've discovered is that AI is like that annoying new recruit who wants to impress by doing far more work than is necessary. It will turn a 10-bullet-pointed summary into a 20-page report, only for the recipient to return it to a bullet-pointed summary.  It reminds me of that wonderful quote from Winston Churchill: “This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.” Yet, from a productivity perspective, what AI is doing is creating a lot of tasks. So much so that it has now been given its own term: “AI-generated work bloat”, or a less friendly version: “AI-generated Work slop”. So, what can we do to “defend” ourselves from this AI-generated work bloat? Well, there are a few things we can do that will allow us to take advantage of AI's incredible abilities, yet still keep our workloads within limits without it slowly becoming overwhelmed with a lot of “work slop”. That nicely brings me on to this week's question, and that means it's time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question: This week's question comes from Robert. Robert asks, Hi Carl, I haven't heard you talk much about AI. Do you have any thoughts on how to get the most out of the new AI tools without them becoming overwhelming? Hi Robert, thank you for your question.  AI is certainly causing some issues in the time management and productivity space. Yet, it is also helping many people to get better organised.  It is like all new technology. There is an initial period in which we try everything to determine where the new technology can help us most. I remember when email became a thing. There was a lot of nervousness about it initially.  I was working in a law firm at the time, and the legal profession in the UK was reluctant to adopt email, even though its benefits over snail mail were obvious. There were fears over privacy and client confidentiality. Eventually, we adopted it, and when we did, it rapidly became an instant messaging portal. Clients who sent an email began expecting an instant reply and quickly called us if they did not receive one within a few minutes.  Fortunately, we had not at that stage entered the smartphone era and were able to explain to clients that when we were out of the office, we were unable to check our emails.  However, email became the new way of communicating, and it soon created a cascade of stuff for us to process and organise, eating up more valuable time—time we didn't have then, let alone today.  I see the same thing happening with AI today. We are trying to adopt AI in so many ways. Some will stick, others will fall by the wayside in time.  It doesn't mean we should reject these new ways immediately. We are in the experimentation stage. It's the fun stage. Testing new ideas, playing with tools and seeing what works for us and what doesn't.  However, some fundamentals remain in play.  The first, and the one that will never go away, is that we only have twenty-four hours a day. We are human. We need to sleep, eat and bathe. All of which takes time out of those 24 hours.  The second is that we can only focus on one thing at a time. We have the freedom to choose what we focus on, but we can only focus on one thing.  So the question is, what will you focus on and when?  We may not be able to stop all this AI-generated work, but we can choose when to work on it. This is where categorising your work helps you choose the right things to work on.  For example, pretty much all of us will have to deal with communications, and it's a great example.  What happens if you don't respond to your emails and messages for a day? Perhaps you're travelling, or are caught up in meetings. That's right, you create a backlog.  The problem with emails and messages is that they never stop coming in, and unless you have a process and time to deal with them, you will miss deadlines and opportunities, and probably upset a lot of people. There are consequences for ignoring your messages.  The solution is to set aside time each day to deal with them. How much time will depend on how much time you have and perhaps the volume of messages that require your attention.  If all you have is twenty minutes between some meetings, take it. You're not going to get much else done. So take advantage of those twenty minutes and clear some of those messages. You may not be able to clear them all, but one is always greater than zero.  If the AI tools you use include suggestions for responses, take advantage of them for the shorter replies.  But, be careful of the longer replies that require your knowledgeable input. AI can respond to some of these, but its responses often sound a little inhuman or, worse, give the wrong information.  Always check the AI-generated responses.  AI can also organise your calendar for you. Personally, I've not had much luck with this, as it doesn't have enough variable information about me to be accurate. What I find AI does is look at what I like to do at certain times of the day and suggests I do that every day, and then fills in everything else around that.  The last time I played with this AI, it recommended I get up at 6:00 am and do my workout. Pu ha ha! I am not going to get up at 6:00 to do any exercise. I hate exercising in the morning.  To get my AI calendar to be reasonably useful, I had to spend far too much time telling it what I wanted, and I realised in the end the fastest way was for me to do it manually.  Going back to the categorisation of your work, if you categorise it by the types of work you do, you can then match your calendar to your categories.  For instance, if you were a doctor, seeing patients would largely take up most of your workday. But you will also need time to complete your prescriptions, update patient notes, respond to messages, deal with any health insurance claims, and so on.  If you don't want to be working late into the night, you will need to be disciplined with your calendar and protect time for the admin and communication tasks.  If you find AI is recommending a lot of tasks for you, from, say, meeting summaries, I recommend you first audit the list, then allocate a category to the work suggested.  Why audit the list?  Well, as I mentioned, AI is like that new recruit trying impress the boss by suggesting more work than is necessary. It will create a lot of tasks.  Your experience will tell you that a lot of those tasks will not need to be done. It's these that need to be removed.  I recently did an experiment. I asked Google's Gemini to give me a list of tasks, spread over four weeks, to start a blog.  This prompt resulted in 29 tasks! And the task of actually writing a first draft was not suggested until the start of week four.  While many of the tasks listed, such as choosing a domain to host the blog and your niche, do need to be done, in the real world, most people who want to start a blog will already know this. It's part of the thought processes that lead to deciding to start a blog. When I audited the list, I reduced it from 29 tasks down to 12. I also found I needed to move some tasks around because they weren't in a logical sequence.  I'm sure over time, AI will get better at this, but always remember that your experience about doing your job will still be better at predicting what needs to be done than AI will.  If you're using the Time Sector System, you will find that your processing naturally fits with AI's method of breaking tasks down into when you “should” be doing them.  My blog experiment allowed me, once I'd audited the list, to quickly move the tasks into the correct sector. Tasks that should be done in the first week were moved to my This Week folder; those for the second week were moved to my Next Week folder; and everything else was moved to my This Month folder.  One of the benefits of using the Time Sector System with AI-generated tasks is that as you are simultaneously deciding when you will do the tasks. You retain the all-important human agency, deciding what is done and when.  But there's one more benefit of the Time Sector System that will help you. That is your weekly limit.  If you have taken the course, you may remember the lesson on capping your weekly tasks to your known limit.  This is where you find the maximum number of tasks you can realistically do in any one week. This number does not include your routines or other recurring low-value tasks. Just the important ones. But we all have a limit.  For me, that number is thirty. If my This Week folder is higher than 30 at the start of the week, I know I am going to struggle to complete my tasks that week. I either need to go back into my This Week folder and remove some of the less urgent tasks or cancel some of my meetings.  This teaches you the vital skills of auditing and prioritisation. Skills you will need in the AI world. It is what will separate us from the AI tools being used.  However, one good thing about AI-generated meeting summaries is that you have a record of the meeting that can be placed inside your meeting notes for projects and teams without any editing.  The workflow I use with these is to use Todoist's brilliant copy/paste feature. Here you can copy a list of tasks and paste them all into your inbox in a single click.  However, if there are a lot of them, I create a temporary project folder for them first, and then, before I move the tasks to their rightful place, I audit the list. Remove tasks that are not relevant, or that I don't need to do, and then move them to the right time sector.  If you don't use Todoist, you can do this with the original meeting summary. Audit, remove and then move the tasks you need to do into the correct time sector.  (A quick heads-up, I have a YouTube video coming out next week that demonstrates this.) So there you go, Robert. It's still early days, and we are very much in the experimentation period with AI. We're testing ways to see how it can help us with our work. This is consequently creating a lot of tasks.  As long as you are auditing these tasks, following the principles of COD, and using the Time Sector System to manage your work, you will be fine. Things will remain manageable and exciting at the same time.  We don't know what the future holds, but your experience and skills will see you through, I can promise you.  Thank you, Robert, for your question. And if you haven't taken the Time Sector System course yet, the all-new edition is now available and can be taken in less than two hours. Look at taking that course as your antidote to the AI-generated work bloat we are all beginning to experience.  Thank you for listening, and it just remains for me now to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:14 – 07:30)A Brazen and Premeditated Assault in D.C.: Two National Guard Members Shot in Targeted Attack – We Will Have to Watch the Unfolding Investigation Very CloselyPart II (07:30 – 21:40)Teens Mourn the Loss of Their ‘Chatbot Friends': This is a Dark Reality for Children and Young People, and Parents Need to BewareTeens Are Saying Tearful Goodbyes to Their AI Companions by The Wall Street Journal (Georgia Wells)Part III (21:40 – 27:37)The Emotional Manipulation by Chatbots: A.I. Developers Want You to Stay Engaged With Chatbot, and They Want As Much of Your Time as PossiblePart IV (27:37 – 29:08)‘But Mine is Alive' – No, Chatbots are Not Alive, With or Without YouReplika AI: Monetizing a Chatbot by The Harvard Business School (Julian De Freitas)Why It Seems Your Chatbot Really, Really Hates to See You Go by The Wall Street Journal (Heidi Mitchell)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.