Ep 67 | How To Get A System To Stick
02/04/19 • 13 min
In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about Getting GTD to work for you.
Links:
Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website
The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System
The Working With... Podcast Previous episodes page
Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes
Script
Hello and welcome to episode 67 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
This week we are visiting the various systems that many of us follow and how to overcome problems when we cannot get it to stick.
But before we delve into the question and answer, I’d like to point you in the direction of my YouTube channel. Recently I have posted a few videos that could really help you get clarity and focus on your work and the things you want to get done. In particular my recent videos on creating a daily workflow in Todoist. Although it is focused on Todoist, the principles of building a workflow in whatever to-do list manager you are using will still apply. And last week’s Productivity Mastery video on discovering your North Star is certainly a must watch. Without finding your purpose—your North Star—you will find yourself running round and round in circles are living your life on other people’s agendas and that is never going to result in a good outcome for you. So check them out. I know they will really help you to get better organised and more productive.
Okay onto this week’s question and that means in now time for me to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Jane. Jane asks: Hi Carl, I’ve read all the usual productivity books from Getting Things Done to your book, Your Digital Life and I understand the ideas in all the books I’ve read. My problem is I just can’t get anything to stick and I end up either not doing what I should be doing or just writing things down on random bits of paper. Do you have any advice to help me get something to stick?
Ooh that’s a good question Jane and thank you for sending it in. Now, I have come across this kind of problem before and it is more common than people might think. There’s a lot of great books on productivity and time management out there with some very sound advice. The difficulty people often find is getting the principles and methods in the books to stick.
The first thing to understand is that the ideas and principles in these books are a set of guiding principles that have worked for the author. In the case of Getting Things Done, for example, creating lists based on contexts (people, places and things) works for David Allen. And for a lot of people organising their to-do lists based on where they are, what tools they have with them and who they are with doesmakes sense. But for other people, myself included, they have never been able to get the context based to-do list to work effectively.
When Getting Things Done was first written in 2001, the smartphone as we know and love it today did not exist. If you wanted to do any kind of email work you needed to be at a computer. Likewis,e if you needed to write a report or essay, you also needed to be at a computer. Today, however, I reply to a lot of my email and often start writing my weekly blog on the bus from my iPhone. I do not need to be at a computer or sat in my office. I can do all those things anywhere at any time.
Whenever I visit a client’s office or meet up with a student of mine, I always have my bag with me and in there I have my iPad. I can create presentations, build spreadsheets and do video conference calls from that device. Again, I no longer have to be in a specific location to do any of those things. If I were to follow the context based list it would be very difficult to allocate specific tasks to specific lists and I would waste a lot of valuable time and energy trying to figure out where tasks should go.
So contexts do not really work for me. However, the principles of collecting everything in to an inbox and processing my inboxes every 24 - 48 hours does work. Ever since I first read GTD back in 2009, that is something I have religiously stuck to and it works 100% of the time for me. In fact, it works so well, I also adopted the same principles for ma...
In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about Getting GTD to work for you.
Links:
Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website
The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System
The Working With... Podcast Previous episodes page
Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes
Script
Hello and welcome to episode 67 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
This week we are visiting the various systems that many of us follow and how to overcome problems when we cannot get it to stick.
But before we delve into the question and answer, I’d like to point you in the direction of my YouTube channel. Recently I have posted a few videos that could really help you get clarity and focus on your work and the things you want to get done. In particular my recent videos on creating a daily workflow in Todoist. Although it is focused on Todoist, the principles of building a workflow in whatever to-do list manager you are using will still apply. And last week’s Productivity Mastery video on discovering your North Star is certainly a must watch. Without finding your purpose—your North Star—you will find yourself running round and round in circles are living your life on other people’s agendas and that is never going to result in a good outcome for you. So check them out. I know they will really help you to get better organised and more productive.
Okay onto this week’s question and that means in now time for me to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Jane. Jane asks: Hi Carl, I’ve read all the usual productivity books from Getting Things Done to your book, Your Digital Life and I understand the ideas in all the books I’ve read. My problem is I just can’t get anything to stick and I end up either not doing what I should be doing or just writing things down on random bits of paper. Do you have any advice to help me get something to stick?
Ooh that’s a good question Jane and thank you for sending it in. Now, I have come across this kind of problem before and it is more common than people might think. There’s a lot of great books on productivity and time management out there with some very sound advice. The difficulty people often find is getting the principles and methods in the books to stick.
The first thing to understand is that the ideas and principles in these books are a set of guiding principles that have worked for the author. In the case of Getting Things Done, for example, creating lists based on contexts (people, places and things) works for David Allen. And for a lot of people organising their to-do lists based on where they are, what tools they have with them and who they are with doesmakes sense. But for other people, myself included, they have never been able to get the context based to-do list to work effectively.
When Getting Things Done was first written in 2001, the smartphone as we know and love it today did not exist. If you wanted to do any kind of email work you needed to be at a computer. Likewis,e if you needed to write a report or essay, you also needed to be at a computer. Today, however, I reply to a lot of my email and often start writing my weekly blog on the bus from my iPhone. I do not need to be at a computer or sat in my office. I can do all those things anywhere at any time.
Whenever I visit a client’s office or meet up with a student of mine, I always have my bag with me and in there I have my iPad. I can create presentations, build spreadsheets and do video conference calls from that device. Again, I no longer have to be in a specific location to do any of those things. If I were to follow the context based list it would be very difficult to allocate specific tasks to specific lists and I would waste a lot of valuable time and energy trying to figure out where tasks should go.
So contexts do not really work for me. However, the principles of collecting everything in to an inbox and processing my inboxes every 24 - 48 hours does work. Ever since I first read GTD back in 2009, that is something I have religiously stuck to and it works 100% of the time for me. In fact, it works so well, I also adopted the same principles for ma...
Previous Episode
Ep 66 | How Regain Control Of Your Daily To-do List
In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about managing an overwhelming to-do list.
Links:
Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website
The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System
The Working With... Podcast Previous episodes page
Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes
Script
Hello and welcome to episode 66 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
This week it’s all about regaining control of your day and the tasks you have to complete so you get your important work done and can actually have some time to yourself each day.
Before I get into this week’s question though, I’d just like to remind you to enrol in my FREE beginners guide to creating your own COD system. This course will give you the framework to develop a simple system that is easy to maintain and will boost your productivity by keeping you focused on the things that are important and will help you to eliminate the unimportant things—the things that do not take you closer to your North Star—ie, your purpose. So get yourself enrolled. It’s free and will only take you around 40 minutes to complete.
Okay, onto this week’s question and that means handing you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Michael. Michael asks: Hi Carl, I have so many tasks every day on my to-do list that I do not know where to start. Is there anything I can do that will help me to make better decisions?
Thank you, Michael, for your question. Now I know this problem is a very common problem indeed. Often we rush to collect everything that comes across our mind whether that is an event, a task or an idea and we dump them all into our to-do list’s inbox. To be honest, that’s actually a very good place to start. Collecting everything is a good thing—after all, it is the first step of COD (collect, organise and do). Now if we are not organising those items at least every day or two, things are going to mount up, and when we look at an overflowing inbox our minds begin to dread looking there and then the whole system begins to fall apart.
So it is important you organise the stuff you collect every day. But, when you do organise you need to be thinking strategically. If you just randomly date things just to get them out of your inbox and so you know they will pop up in your today list one day in the future you are going to have a few problems. The first problem of course is you will have a list of to-dos in your today view that don’t really need doing that day. When that happens we tend to stop prioritising our today list. The purpose of your today list is that anything on there really does need your attention that day. It could be a simple reminder task to review a project that after seeing it, you decide to put off for another week. That’s okay, the important thing is when a task appears on your today list it has to appear there because you want to see it on that specific day. If you do not need to see it that day, then it should not be on your today list.
And that brings me to another problem I often see. That is one of trust. If you do not trust you will see a task when you need to see a task you will date everything—randomly— and that causes a long list of tasks on a today list you do not need to see. It’s a trust issue.
Now not trusting your system can be because you have just started with a productivity system and it will take time to trust it. It could be caused by constantly switching to-do list managers so you are not sure if everything migrated across properly from your previous to-do list manager or it could be because you are not doing a full weekly review—which is the most common reason.
Now there are two types of weekly reviews. There’s a normal, take it slowly with a nice cup of tea and some great music weekly review and then there’s the secret weekly review that people like me who coach people to become better organised and more productive don’t like to tell you about. But, because I am feeling VERY generous today, and will tell you... But only this once so listen carefully...
The secret weekly review is called the “skimmed weekly review”. The skimmed weekly review only takes around fifteen to twenty minutes, as opposed to the full forty-five to sixty minutes a normal weekly review takes...
Next Episode
Ep 68 | How To Manage Your Email Overload
In this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast, I answer a question about getting overloaded email under control .
Links:
Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website
The Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System
The Working With... Podcast Previous episodes page
Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes
The 2019 Edition of Your Digital Life 2.0
Script
Hello and welcome to episode 68 of my Working With Podcast. A podcast created to answer all your questions about productivity, GTD, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.
I can’t believe it has taken 68 episodes to finally get to one of the biggest problems people face when it comes to productivity and time management and that is email. We all have it, and for most people, it is out of control and inboxes just get bigger and bigger every day. So, this week we are going to tackle the issue and hopefully help you to finally get email under control and, more importantly, make it so it is easily manageable and it never gets out of control again.
But first, I am excited to tell you all that the 2019 edition of my most popular, complete productivity and time management course has just been released. Your Digital Life 2.0 Online, the 2019 edition is now available and this year I have added a brand new workbook you can download and keep so you have a ready reference guide for when things slip. Also, I have added a number of new classes around the Golden 10 and the 2+8 Prioritisation systems AND... I have updated the freebies so now you have access to two of my most recent courses for FREE!
So go on and check it out. The link to the course details is in the show notes. This course WILL give you everything you need to become super productive and much better at time management.
Okay onto this week’s question and that means it’s time for me to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Greg. Greg asks, Do you have any tips to help me get my email under control. I have over 4,000 emails in my inbox and I just do not know where to start to get this mess under control. Any help would be much appreciated.
Thank you, Greg, for this excellent question.
Okay, first up. Email is just another task input we have to make a decision about. Whenever a new email comes in, we need to decide what it is and what we need to do with it. Email is unique in many ways though. Unlike regular tasks, where you add it to your inbox, with email someone else is adding it to your inbox. You don’t have much control over what and how much comes in each day. Or do you?
You see, part of the problem is we sign up for all sorts of newsletters, promotions and other services and each day those services and newsletters come in. Day after day. Because we have no control over when these newsletters and promotions come in we just let them pile up. They invade our inboxes and just sit there waiting to be dealt with. But of course these emails are not important and so we just leave them, hoping that we will have time soon to go through them and read them. Which we don’t do.
So, here’s my first tip. Get them out of your inbox. Instead, create a webmail account. You could create a Gmail or Hotmail account for instance and only have that account available to you through the internet. Do not put this account into your email app. Only allow yourself access to it through the internet.
Other things you can use this account for is online shopping. Every time you order something use this email address. The companies you buy from will use your email address to send you offers and other promotional emails after you have ordered something, some of which you may be interested in. So having this extra email address just for your shopping and newsletters is a great way to get a lot of the email you receive each day out of your mail email accounts.
All you need to do then is create a recurring task in your to-do list manager to remind you to check this account from time to time.
Okay, for most of you, that will probably get rid of 50% or more of the email you receive each day. It puts you back in control of what email you see each day.
Now, onto the management of your email. All you really need today is four folders. An inbox, an Action Today folder, a waiting for folder and an...
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