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Beyond the Chaos: Building a Low-Maintenance Productivity System

Beyond the Chaos: Building a Low-Maintenance Productivity System

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 Where would you start if you were to completely redesign your productivity and time management system? That’s what I’m looking at this week. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Getting Things Done With Linda Geerdink Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Time Sector System 5th Year Anniversary 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 | 367 Hello, and welcome to episode 367 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. One of the things that can hold you back from creating a solid time management and productivity system is the legacy of your old habits and systems. It could be you have always done things a particular way, which may have worked well in the past, but no longer does. Yet, the hold of the familiar keeps you wedded to that old habit. Or, your company may have adopted a new system or piece of software that has a number of possibilities that you haven’t explored yet. And, of course, the elephant in the room where you have so many tools it’s paralysing you when it comes to deciding what to use. So, how would you go about doing an overhaul on your system so it’s simple, easy and does not require a lot of maintenance to keep working? That’s the topic of this week’s question and so, without further ado, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Lindsay. Lindsay asks, hi Carl, I recently took your new Time Sector System course and I love it. The trouble I am having is I have so much stuff all over the place, I don’t know where to start to rebuild my system. Do you have any tips that may help? Hi Lindsay, thank you for your question. There’s a great YouTube video, where David Allen, author of Getting Things Done spends a day with Linda Geerdink, a Dutch journalist showing her how to get her life organised. (I’ll put the video in the show notes) It’s quite emotional at times as Linda has never had any kind of system in the past and has lived her professional and personal life by the seat of her pants. David Allen comes across as being a little cruel at times, yet, I can understand where he is coming from. Sometimes you need to be cruel to be kind in order to help someone get to where they want to be. What fascinated me about this video is the utter chaos the start of the process of building a system can be. When you gather everything you may or may not need to do into one central place, it can seem daunting. And when that involves papers, documents and digital stuff, it can feel like you are drowning in an ocean of stuff that must be done. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. So, where would I start if I was to rebuild my system? I would suggest watching that David Allen video. It starts in Dutch, but when David is introduced to the video, it continues in English. What David gets Linda to do is exactly right. Gather everything you have into a central place. Today, that’s going to be largely digital stuff. If you have notes in several notes apps, pick one and go through the process of bringing everything together into one. Which notes app you choose doesn’t really matter too much, although I would choose one that is simple to use. The more complex a notes app is, the more time you will need to maintain it in the future. (Which is not a very productive way to go about it) The good thing about notes is they are rarely urgent. Notes are support materials for meetings, projects and ideas. Most notes apps will allow you to get a URL link so you can link the important notes to tasks in your task manager. Now with you task manager, again, if you have a few of these laying around, again, pick one—a simple one, and move any tasks from the apps you discard into the one you’ve chosen’s inbox. Then process your inbox. Use the three questions: What is it? What do I need to do? When will I do it? And then move the task to the appropriate folder. Now, I know all this may take a long time. Often it can take a few days. The best way to do this is to take a day or two off and dedicate those days to getting your system sorted out. It can be fun, no really, it can be. Just be careful when you do this. We can become quite nostalgic when doing this and keep stopping to read through old notes. Now’s not the time to do this. If you do find yourself doing this create a folder called “nostalgia” and drop them in there. You can then go back to that folder when you’re finished. One tip here is to think ...
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