Why Your Planning Doesn't Work (And The Myth About Waiting For Tasks)

Podcast 178 This week, what can you do when your plan for the week is destroyed and your waiting for list get out of control.   You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Ultimate Productivity 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 178 Hello and welcome to episode 178 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. So, you’re finally doing your weekly planning session, you have your focused work times blocked on your calendar and you are confident you will be able to get all your important work done that week.  Then, one email from your boss late Monday afternoon throws everything out. You have to ditch the plan and all the things you have been waiting for are required right now.  How do you manage that? Well, hopefully, in this episode I will give you some strategies to help you stay in control. Now before I do that… Don’t forget, you can save yourself over $200 when you buy The Ultimate Productivity course bundle. This bundle gives you six courses for just $175 including the Time Sector System, Your Digital Life 3.0 and Time and Life Mastery.  With this bundle you get everything you need to build your personalised productivity system at your own pace. And that is important. It takes time to piece together a system that works seamlessly for you and that’s what this bundle of courses will enable you to do. Taking one course each weekend over the next six weeks will give you the knowledge, the know-how and the tools to put together a system that will stick.  So, if you want to finally nail down your time management, goal planning and productivity so you have every part of your life in balance, start today and get yourself the Ultimate Productivity bundle.  Full details and more information are in the show notes.  Okay, 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 Melissa. Melissa asks: Hi Carl, This year I have done really well on doing a weekly review every Saturday morning and I get my week planned and organised. But, I find most weeks, by the time I get to Wednesday, I am far behind on my plan because I get given other work from my boss, I am waiting for my colleagues to get back to me with important information and my customers are always contacting me asking for help. How do you stay with your plan when so many things keep forcing you to change everything? Hi Melissa, great question and I am sure a lot of people find themselves in the same situation as you do. I know it happens to me more often than I like. So, firstly, it’s fantastic to hear you are consistently doing the weekly planning session. That’s important because it keeps you on top of your bigger picture direction and helps to avoid missing anything important. A lot of the reasons why people find themselves overwhelmed and directionless is because they don’t spend any time stepping away and reviewing where they are with their projects and goals.  If you don’t know where you are, how will you ever know what you need to do next to get the project or goal completed?  And let’s be honest here, a weekly planning session takes no more than thirty minutes if you are doing it consistently every week. If you are not doing it consistently, then, sure, it’s going to take you a lot longer because you will inevitably have a lot more to review.  Now, no matter how well you plan the week, unless you are hidden away in a log cabin high up in the mountains with no connection to the outside wo