Hello, and welcome to episode 364 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.

When I was little, a police officer lived in our village. The police service provided his home, and his job was to look after the local community. Sargeant Morris was my first introduction to the police, and he taught me some valuable lessons—not least about the importance of being a law-abiding citizen.

Yet, a lesson he taught me that I never realised how important it was until later was the power of daily routines. Each morning at 8:00 am, Sergeant Morris would walk up and down the main street in our village, ensuring that the schoolchildren got to school safely.

He was also there when we returned from school at the end of the day. I’m sure there were days he was unable to be there, but all I remember is his presence on the street when I went and came back from school.

He would wear his hi-viz jacket, chat with the parents and children, and make sure we crossed the road at the pedestrian crossing and that the traffic didn’t drive too fast down the street.

I also remember because of his presence, seemingly day and night, crime was almost non-existent in our village.

It was the simple things—things that did not require a lot of effort or knowledge—that made Sergeant Morris a part of my childhood I will never forget.

And that is the same for you and me today. It’s the little things repeated that make the biggest difference to our productivity.

And 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 Mike. Mike asks, hi Carl. What would you say are the basics of becoming more productive?

Hi Mike, thank you for your question.

It’s funny you’ve asked this question as it’s something I have been thinking a lot about recently. What are the absolute basics of being productive?

I would first start with something I wrote extensively about in Your Time, Your Way, and those are the three foundations:

Sleep, exercise, and diet.

How do you feel when you’ve had a bad night’s sleep? Perhaps you only get two or three hours of sleep. How does your day go?

Probably not very well at all. You may be able to get through the morning, but when the afternoon comes around, you’re going to slump.

If that poor sleep continues for a few days, and you’re going to get sick.

Now let’s flip that. How do you feel when you get a solid night’s sleep? What does that do to your productivity?

The difference between the two is huge. On the days you get enough sleep, you’ll focus better and for longer. You’ll make less mistakes and, something rarely talked about, you’ll make better decisions.

That helps yo...

Podcast 364

What are the solid basics of becoming more productive that anyone can use today? That’s the question I’m answering this week.

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Script | 364

He would wear his hi-viz jacket, chat with the parents and children, and make sure we crossed the road at the pedestrian crossing and that the traffic didn’t drive too fast down the street.

I also remember because of his presence, seemingly day and night, crime was almost non-existent in our village.

It was the simple things—things that did not require a lot of effort or knowledge—that made Sergeant Morris a part of my childhood I will never forget.

And that is the same for you and me today. It’s the little things repeated that make the biggest difference to our productivity.

And 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 Mike. Mike asks, hi Carl. What would you say are the basics of becoming more productive?

Hi Mike, thank you for your question.

It’s funny you’ve asked this question as it’s something I have been thinking a lot about recently. What are the absolute basics of being productive?

I would first start with something I wrote extensively about in Your Time, Your Way, and those are the three foundations:

Sleep, exercise, and diet.

How do you feel when you’ve had a bad night’s sleep? Perhaps you only get two or three hours of sleep. How does your day go?

Probably not very well at all. You may be able to get through the morning, but when the afternoon comes around, you’re going to slump.

If that poor sleep continues for a few days, and you’re going to get sick.

Now let’s flip that. How do you feel when you get a solid night’s sleep? What does that do to your productivity?

That helps yo...

Previous Episode

Happy 5th Anniversary to The Time Sector System

How flexible are you? That’s what we’re looking at this week.

You can subscribe to this podcast on:

Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

The Time Sector System 5th Year Anniversary

The YouTube Time Sector System Playlist

Take The NEW COD Course

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 | 363

Hello, and welcome to episode 363 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.

You may have heard this week that my Time Sector System is five years old. And to celebrate, I updated the whole course.

Now, before I start to update a course, I go into Evernote and review all the comments I have collected from students and see if there are any common issues or difficulties that I could improve or explain better.

The Time Sector System works. It’s based on timeless principles that have been used by some of the most productive people who have ever lived. As with all solid principles, there needs to be a degree of flexibility to accommodate the different ways we all work and the type of work we do.

The way authors, for example, will protect three to four hours a day for writing might not be practical for a customer support assistant or a manager managing a team of twenty salespeople. Similarly, an architect will work differently from a doctor in an emergency room.

Yet, there are still some timeless principles that work no matter what role you have.

For example, it doesn’t matter how much you have to do if you don’t have the time to do it. Makes sense, right?

I could decide to write my next book today. That’s the easy part. The difficult part is finding the time to write the book. I’m not sure how many hours I spent writing Your Time, Your Way, but from the first day I sat down to begin writing the first draft to when it was published in May last year, it was three years and I know every week, I spend at least ten hours on it— so roughly 2,000 hours.

Given that each week only has 168 hours, it would not be possible to write a book in a week.

One of the most productive companies I worked for was an advertising agency in Korea. The manager, Patrick, was smart. He realised that for his team to get the campaigns completed on time, he had to protect the time of his copywriters and graphic designers. They needed quiet, undisturbed time to do their work.

Yet the account managers and social media planners needed to be talking with each other and external companies to arrange space for the billboards, and media companies.

The account managers and planners generally had a meeting with each other each day.

The creative team only had two meetings per week. The Monday planning meeting where they planned out the work to be completed that week and the Friday morning team meeting where everything was discussed.

This meant the creatives (as they were called) had the quiet time to focus on their work.

In the four years I worked with that team, I never recall a time where they missed a deadline or even felt under pressure to complete a campaign. I’m sure there were occasions when they were under pressure—clients can be very demanding—but it was never noticeable....

Next Episode

How to Build A Productive Team

This week, how to manage your team (and your boss) productively

You can subscribe to this podcast on:

Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin

Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived

The Time Sector System 5th Year Anniversary

The YouTube Time Sector System Playlist

Take The NEW COD Course

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 | 365

Hello, and welcome to episode 365 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 work a lot with managers and business leaders, where a part of their job is to manage teams of people. This kind of work can be quite different from a self-employed graphic designer, for example, whose main work each day is designing.

There’s an interesting interplay going on in a team environment. Managers need information from their people. To get that information, they need to stop their team from doing their work. Then there is the team who need less distraction in order to get their work done to the highest quality and on time.

In my experience, the most productive teams are the ones who have found a happy balance between the manager’s need for information and the team’s need to work undisturbed.

So, the question is, how do you find that balance and if you are a member of a team with a boss who is interrupting you a little too much how do you retrain your boss?

Two questions from one wonderful listener who has sent in a question.

And with that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Sam. Sam asks, hi Carl, do you have any tips and ideas for managing a team productively (I manage a team of eight) and how to manage a boss who is disorganised and never remembers what she’s asked us to do. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Hi Sam, thank you for your question.

It sounds like you’re caught in the middle of a productivity nightmare. A boss who has no idea how to get the most out of their team and as a consequence you are unable to help your team work productively.

Let’s start with the easier of the two. Managing a team.

To help you get to the right place, we need to step back a little. A manager’s role is to support their team. To provide them with clear instructions and the right tools, and then to keep out of the way and let them get on and do what they were employed to do.

At a strategic level that means clear communication—what do you want, how do you want it and when do you want it delivered?

And then to step back and let them get on and do it.

Let me give you an example of this in play.

I record my YouTube videos on a Wednesday. I then create the timeline of the video in Adobe Premiere Pro and send everything to my video editor to do the animations, clean things up and get it ready for publication.

In a Google Doc, I write out what I want—where I want split screen effects and other animations. I also add the date I need the finished video for.

That’s communication part.

I then step back and let my video editor get on and do her thing. I don’t care how she does the animations or what tools she uses—she likes to use something called CapCut, for example. ...