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Why Hybrid Productivity Systems are the Most Effective Systems

Why Hybrid Productivity Systems are the Most Effective Systems

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 Podcast 405 "Pen and paper will solve almost anything. Or at least start the process." - Nicholas Bate This week, I have a special episode for you about what I have discovered over the last two years from bringing pens and paper back into my productivity system. It’s certainly been an eye-opener for me. Links: Email Me | Twitter | Fac ebook | Website | Linkedin The Hybrid Productivity Course Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived 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 | 405 Hello, and welcome to episode 405 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. A week ago, I launched a brand new course called the Hybrid Productivity Course. The purpose of this course was to help those who have found that a digital-only approach has led to a loss of focus on what’s important and a sense of extreme overwhelm and distraction. As in most areas of life, a one-size-fits-all methodology rarely works. All humans are unique. We think differently, have different life experiences, grow up differently and experience life through many different cultures. It stands to reason that none of us will have exactly the same needs as everyone else. We saw this during the pandemic. Around 50% of people loved working from home. They thrived and became much more productive. The other 50% struggled, found it hard to do their work, and lost their enthusiasm and energy for it. This highlighted the difference between extroverts and introverts. Extroverts bounce off the energy of other people. They need the bustling office environment to operate. Take that away, and they slump. Introverts, on the other hand, thrive in the opposite conditions. Quiet spaces and solo environments are where they thrive. I always struggled in an office environment. I found it difficult to concentrate and focus. When I began working from home in 2015, my productivity went through the roof. I suddenly had the freedom to work when I liked, where I liked and in the quiet solitude of my front living room. One advantage of an all-digital system is that you can easily add many features to your digital tools without much thought. I noticed this while testing Todoist’s new feature, Ramble. Ramble lets you have a conversation with Todoist, and it pulls out all the things you indicate need to be done. Sounds great in theory, until you test it out. Just a two-minute “conversation” with Ramble led to 15 tasks! When I went back into my inbox to sort them out, I realised that the majority of those tasks were low-value, would-be-nice-to-do tasks, but realistically, there was no way I would have the time to do them. I edited down that list of 15 to 6 tasks. The problem is that most people will not edit these lists. It’s time-consuming, and you have to think it through. Two things that are out of fashion these days, it seems. This is where I found bringing a pen and notebook back into my system really helped. It forced me to edit down my list of tasks for the day. It also made me smarter when writing my lists. If I had five people to call today, in the digital system, I would write out all five calls independently. It didn’t take long, and most of those would already be in the digital system. All I had to do was add a date. In a paper system, it would mean writing out all those calls individually. You soon find that rather than doing that, you would write “do my calls”. Writing those three words strangely reinforced the action. All you then needed to do was to ensure that any communication tasks were correctly labelled in your digital system. This is where the seeds of a hybrid system began to take shape. If it were easier to collect using digital tools, then why stop doing it that way? If you were more focused when writing out a daily to-do list than using a digital to-do list, why stop doing that? My idea was to marry the two. This led to the development of what I call my Day Book. However, before I got there, I went back to my roots and used the Franklin Planner for eighteen months. The strength of the Franklin Planner is in the way the daily pages are laid out. You have your daily prioritised task list on the left, your calendar for the day next to it, and, on the right page, a place to keep notes and ideas. This means that once you have written your appointments, you can see how much time you have available to do tasks. It forces you to be realistic. If you had seven hours of meetings and began writing out a long list of tasks, you would instantly see that you were creating an impossible day. If you were to consider meeting overruns, the...
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