What is Personal productivity All About?

This week, We are looking at productivity and time management and how you can improve both areas.   You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   The Ultimate productivity Course Bundle Download the FREE Areas of Focus Workbook More about the Time Sector System The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page   Episode 183 Hello and welcome to episode 183 of the Working With 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 for this show. I talk a lot about productivity and time management on this podcast and yet I don’t think I have ever answered a question about the actual mechanics of improving both. So this week, that’s what I am going to do.  Before we get into the question, I would like to draw your attention to my Ultimate productivity Bundle. I put this together because I have a lot of requests for discounts on multiple purchases. So, I have done just that.  You can now buy my three most popular courses: The Time Sector System course, Your Digital Life 3.0 and Productivity Masterclass PLUS get Time And Life Mastery thrown in for FREE. You save yourself over $100 and all it will cost you is $175.00.  This is the best value bundle I have put together and will change your whole approach to productivity and managing your workload.  Full details of the bundle are in the show notes.  Okay, it’s time for me now to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Shelly. Shelly asks, hi Carl. I hear a lot about how we should be improving our time management and productivity, but I don’t really understand what all this is about. To me, productivity is something you hear about in factories not in an office. Could you explain what the fundamentals of all this is about and, more importantly, why I should care? Hi Shelly, Thank you for your question and don’t worry, I am sure a lot of people feel the same way you do.  Let’s start with the easy one. Time Management. The truth is you cannot manage time. Time is fixed. We all get the same amount of time each day and there is nothing we can do to change that. The only thing you can manage is what you do in the time you have.  However, that does give us something to work with. If we work eight hours a day and we have an amount of work to do all we need to do is start at the top and work our way down. I know this sounds incredibly simplistic, but it works.  Now, it was much easier to do this in our paper-based days. When we had letters instead of email and physical file folders instead of digital folders on a computer screen. In those dim distant days, we could see our work. Today, a lot of our work is not easily seen.  However, that does not mean we cannot manage it. Today, we need to make our work more overt. To do that all you need is set yourself up with a to-do list. This can be digital or paper-based. It does not really matter, but what does matter is you collect everything you have to do on to this to-do list.  Now, how do you make this work so you are better at managing your activities in the time given? There are a few ways to do this and it really depends on the kind of work you do. However, the most important part of this is to schedule some time on your calendar for doing your work. This is the part most people miss.  I know a lot of people are great at collecting all their work into their to-do list but are terrible at making sure they have enough time to do the work.  Let me give you an example. Most people get a lot of emails and the emails that require replies can take up as much as two hours a day. If this happens to you, how do you expect to reply t