What are the time-tested principles of better time management and productivity? That’s what I’m exploring in this week’s episode. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Ultimate Productivity Workshop Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 337 Hello, and welcome to episode 337 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 have read books on time management and productivity, you may have picked up that there are a few basic principles that never seem to change. Things like writing everything down, not relying on your head to remember things, planning your day and week, and writing out what is important to you. These are solid principles that have remained unchanged for hundreds of years. The tools we use may have changed, but these principles have not and never will. What is surprising are the attempts to reinvent time management. New apps and systems seem to come out every month claiming to be “game-changing”—I hate that phrase—or more ways to defy the laws of time and physics and somehow create more time in the day than is possible. Hyrum Smith, the creator of the Franklin Planner, an icon of time management and productivity, always said that time management principles have not changed in over 6,000 years. What has changed is the speed at which we try to do things. Technology hasn’t changed these time management principles; all technology has done is make doing things faster. Today, I can send an email to the other side of the world, and it will arrive instantly. Two hundred years ago, I would have had to write a letter, go to the post office to purchase a stamp, and send it. It would arrive two or three months later. Funnily enough, I read a book called The Man With The Golden Typewriter. It’s a book of letters Ian Fleming sent to his readers and publisher. He often began his letters with the words “Thank you for your letter of the 14th of February,” yet the date of his reply was in April. Not only were things slower fifty years ago, people were more patient. So, with all that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Lisa. Lisa asks, Hi Carl, I’ve noticed you’ve been talking about basic principles of productivity recently. Are there any principles you follow that have not changed? Hi Lisa, thank you for your question. The answer is yes, there are. Yet, it took me a long time to realise the importance of these principles. The first one, which many people try to avoid, is establishing what is important to you. This is what I call doing the backend work. You see, if you don’t know what is important to you, your days will be driven by the latest urgent thing. That’s likely to come from other people and not from you. Stephen Covey wrote about this in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, with his Time Management Matrix, also called the Eisenhower Matrix. This matrix is divided into Important and urgent, important and not urgent, urgent and not important, and not urgent and not important. The goal of this matrix is to spend as much time as possible in the second quadrant—the important but not urgent. This area includes things like getting enough sleep, planning, exercising, and taking preventative action. The more time you spend here, the less time you will spend in the urgent and important and urgent and not important areas. Yet, unless you know what is important to you, the only thing driving your day will be the things that are important to others. That includes your company, your friends and family. They will be making demands on you, and as you have no barriers, their crises will become yours. You, in effect, become part of the problem instead of being part of the solution. When you have your life together, you can offer calm, considered solutions to those you care about. You also know when to get involved and when to stay well away. Yet, you can only do that when you know what is important to you. Many authors and time management specialists refer to establishing what is important to you in different ways; Hyrum Smith calls this establishing your governing values, Stephen Covey calls it knowing your roles, and I call them your areas of focus. These are just names for essentially the same thing. Get to know what is important to you as an individual. Then, write them down in a place where you can refer back to them ...
