Episodes

  • 5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before 2026 Begins

    5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before 2026 Begins
    Oct 5 2025
    “I used to say, ‘I sure hope things will change, ' then I learned that the only way things are going to change for me is when I change." That’s a quote from the wonderful Jim Rohn. A strong proponent of developing a plan for your life, and a part of that is creating a strong plan for the new year. In this special episode, I’ll walk you through the steps for the Annual Planning Season, which began on October 1st. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Join the Time And Life Mastery Programme here. Use the coupon code: codisgreat to get 50% off. 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 | 388 Hello, and welcome to episode 388 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 mistake I used to make was to come up with some ideas about what I would like to change in the new year in that gap between Christmas and the New Year. The only reason I ever did that was because my friends were asking, “What are your New Year’s resolutions?” I never really had any, so I used to quickly think up some cool-sounding ideas and say that was what I was going to do. And yet, it wasn’t always like that. When I was a competitive athlete in my teens, each year in December, I would sit down with my coach and plan what we would achieve the following year. What times we were going for and which races were to be the “big ones”. I still remember the year I broke 2 minutes for the 800 metres and 4 minutes for the 1,500 metres. We knew I was close, having ended the previous year at 2 minutes 3 seconds for the 800 and 4 minutes 6 seconds for the 1,500. All that was needed was a good, strong winter and pre-season training. I remember going into 1986 in one of the most positive frames of mind ever. Then, when I stopped running competitively—one of my biggest regrets—I stopped planning the year. And that coincided with my not achieving very much. I drifted from one job to another. Had no idea what I wanted to do, and I remember feeling unfulfilled and lost. Fortunately, I rediscovered annual planning. The sitting down and thinking about what I wanted to accomplish. It was that restart that resulted in me coming to Korea, and discovering my passion—teaching. Everything I have achieved over the last 23 years can be traced back to following my annual planning method. From finding a career I loved, to getting married and moving to the East Coast of Korea—one of the most beautiful places in the world—and starting the company I run today, now employing four people. All of these ideas began with the annual planning method. So, what is the annual planning method? Well, it’s five simple questions you ask yourself and give some thought to over two months—October and November. Those five questions are: What would you like to change about yourself?What would you like to change about your lifestyle?What would you like to change about the way you work?What could you do to challenge yourself?What goals would you like to achieve? Let me explain the kind of things you can think about. What would you like to change about yourself? This is about you. Your current habits and routines. Are these delivering the results you want? When I sat down to write Your Time, Your Way, I knew I had to sacrifice some exercise time in order to write. I was okay with that, and I also knew a consequence of reducing my exercise time would be a gain in weight. Two years later, I had gained eight kilograms (about 17 ½ pounds)! Not good. If my weight exceeds 83 kilograms, I feel sluggish and quickly become tired. So, in my planning last year, I made it a non-negotiable to get my weight back to my regular weight of 80 kilograms (about 176 pounds or 12 ½ stone) Today, as I write this, my weight is 80.5 kgs. Well within my weight window. That all started with asking myself, “What do I want to change about myself?” The answer was to get back into my regular exercise routine. So, what would you like to change about yourself? Are you doing things that are not contributing to the results you want? Are you not consistently planning your days or weeks? Are you not moving enough? Are you spending too much time sitting down in front of a screen and not enough time in nature? Another one is how you dress. The pandemic saw a collapse in the way people dressed. This may not interest you, but perhaps you’d like to dress better when you go out. What could...
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    16 mins
  • Why Your Ego Is Writing Checks Your Body Can't Cash

    Why Your Ego Is Writing Checks Your Body Can't Cash
    Sep 28 2025
    “Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.” That is possibly one of Stephen Covey’s most famous quotes. It’s at the heart of almost all time management and productivity advice today. It addresses one of the biggest challenges today—the cycle of focusing on the urgent at the expense of working on the important. If you focus on the urgent, all you get is more urgent stuff. If you focus on the important, you reduce the urgent stuff. It’s all about priorities, and that’s what we’re looking at today. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course 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 | 387 Hello, and welcome to episode 387 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. There are two natural laws of time management and productivity that, for one reason or another, are frequently forgotten, and yet they are immutable and permanent, and you or I cannot change them. They are: You can only do one thing at a time, and anything you do requires time. When you understand this and internalise it, you can create a solid time management and productivity system based on your needs and what you consider important. This doesn’t change at any time in your life. When we are young and dependent on our parents, these natural laws still hold true. These laws are still then when we retire from the workforce and perhaps gain a little more agency over our time. You can take the time to landscape your garden and travel the world, yet you cannot do both simultaneously. Even if you are fortunate enough to be able to afford to hire a landscape gardener to do the bulk of the heavy lifting for you, you will still need time to plan what you want done and find the right landscaper. What this means is every day you have a puzzle to solve. What to do with the time you have available that day. And the secret to getting good at solving this daily puzzle is to know what your priorities are. And that is where a little foresight and thought can help you quickly make the right decisions. And that neatly brings us to this week’s question, which means it’s time for me now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice. This week’s question comes from Mel. Mel asks, Hi Carl, I’ve followed you for some time now and would love to know your thoughts on prioritising your day. I have family commitments and work full-time, and I often struggle to fit everything in. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Hi Mel, Thank you for your question. I must confess it took me many years to understand these natural laws. Like most people, I felt I could get anything done on time, that I had plenty of time to fit in more meetings, accept more demands on my time, and still have time to spend with my family and friends. Yet, I never managed to accept more meetings and requests, meet my commitments, and spend quality time with the people I cared about. I found myself working until 2:00 am most days and starting earlier and earlier each day to keep my promises. And, like most people, I thought all I needed to do was to find another productivity tool. A new app would surely solve my time problems. This was at the height of the “hustle culture” trend ten to fifteen years ago. It was all about working more and more hours. I fell into the trap of believing that to be successful, all I had to do was throw more hours at the problem. Well, that didn’t work out. All that happened was I felt tired all day, and my productivity fell like a brick. It felt good to work until one or two in the morning. I felt I was doing what I needed to do to be successful. Yet, I conveniently forgot I was having to take naps throughout the day, and when I was awake, I procrastinated like I was in the Olympic procrastination final. And all those new tools I was constantly downloading, looking for the Holy Grail of productivity apps, meant I had tasks, events and information all over the place, which required a lot of wasted time trying to find where I had put the latest world-changing idea. What I was doing was violating the laws of time. You can only do one thing at a time, and everything you do requires time. The lightbulb moment was realising that I had a limited amount of time each day, which meant that if I was to get the most important things done each day, I needed to know the most important ...
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    15 mins
  • How to Protect Your Focus Time When Everyone Wants You Now

    How to Protect Your Focus Time When Everyone Wants You Now
    Sep 21 2025
    I want to begin today’s episode by thanking you for listening to this podcast. Earlier this week, this podcast surpassed one million downloads. For context, that puts this podcast in the top 3 to 5 percent of the productivity and time management niche. So, thank you. I do this for you, and for all of you who have sent in questions for answering. You keep me on my toes and challenge me every week. For that, I am eternally grateful. Thank you. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course 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 | 386 Hello, and welcome to episode 386 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. This week’s question is about a subject I’ve always been a little afraid of covering. I’m afraid because there is no simple answer, yet it’s certainly one that has a solution. Unfortunately, that solution isn’t an easy one to implement. How do you manage your time and productivity in a dynamic, fast changing work environment? The problem is that standard advice often doesn’t work. For instance, if you are in IT support and systems and company wide software are continually breaking down, how do you find the time to do focused work, when you are being interrupted by emergencies from the moment you arrive at work to the time you leave? It does have a solution, but it involves the word “no” and the use of experience and knowledge to determine how “urgent” something really is. I’m currently reading Dominic Sandbrook’s book, Seasons in the Sun. It’s about Britain between 1974 and 1979. Five years when the British government was in perpetual turmoil. Not just dealing with one or two crises. There were hundreds and they were happening every day. From economic breakdown to Northern Ireland being on the verge of civil war. Every day brought a new emergency that needed instant solutions. Reading it today makes the political turmoils we face now look like a walk on the beach by comparison. Yet the government managed, just. It wasn’t easy, but they muddled through, and economic collapse and Northern Ireland civil war did not happen. It was close, but these catastrophes were fortunately averted. Reading about it now, it seems the UK between 1975 and 1980 was collapsing, yet as Dominic Sandbrook points out, it didn’t and most people were able to get on with their lives and improve their living standards. If you’re working in an environment where you feel you are only one crisis away from a total shutdown, don’t despair. It can be handled, and it’s possible to implement some processes and techniques to maintain some sanity when you may feel things are about to fall apart. So, with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Jan. Jan asks, Hi Carl, I work in a company with no boundaries. Anyone can send a Teams message to me anytime, and I am expected to deal with it immediately. This means I never have time to do my important work. What advice would you give to someone in my position? Thank you, Jan for your question. One of the most dangerous things one can do is to believe there is no way through when the work piles up and there seems to be no respite. The first place I would begin in your situation, Jan, is to look at the type of requests you are getting. Not all of them will be urgent must be done immediately. It’s also likely when you look at them, you will find that very few are of that nature. Back in the day, when I worked in hotel management, it could be said that no one day was ever the same. And there were a lot of unknowns happening practically every minute. Yet, our training was build on understanding what was urgent and what was not. A business party turning up at 8:30 am asking where their pre-booked meeting room was, when no such room had been prepared was a drop everything and get the room set up urgently. Similarly, a guest asking for a hairdryer, was also a drop everything urgency—it was likely they discovered their hairdryer was not working after they had just washed their hair. Yet most other requests were handled in the normal fashion. A change of towels, a noisy air conditioner that won’t turn off or missing bottles of water from a room’s mini-bar. All of these “urgencies” would have been unknown when the day began, but given that they happened ...
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    15 mins
  • Why Your Life Feels Like a Mess (And the 3 Basics That Will Fix It)

    Why Your Life Feels Like a Mess (And the 3 Basics That Will Fix It)
    Sep 14 2025
    "The real magic lies at the intersection between eating, moving, and sleeping. If you can do all three well, it will improve your daily energy and your odds of living a long, healthy life," That’s a quote from Tom Rath, author of Eat Move Sleep. The three most important factors in you becoming more productive, focused and motivated each day. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course 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 | 385 Hello, and welcome to episode 385 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. Don’t skip the basics. For me, this was a hard lesson to learn. I used to stay up late to finish work or watch TV. I’d skip my exercise or allow myself to get involved in meetings I didn’t really need to attend—just to feel a part of something. And I would eat rubbish—cereal for breakfast, sandwiches and rice or fries for lunch and pizza for dinner. And I felt it. I was tired, unproductive, and did not know where I was going. My weight kept going up and up, and every day felt like a drudge. I would wake up, feel horrible, go to work, come home, collapse onto the sofa, turn on the TV, and escape the real world. It was easy to blame everyone else. My boss, my colleagues, my customers, the weather, where I lived, the company, etc. Yet, it wasn’t anyone else’s fault. It was mine. I had allowed myself to wallow in self-pity. That was a choice. I cannot say there was a particular moment that changed me. It was more a gradual change. What I learned, though, was that creating an enjoyable, exciting, and fulfilling life started with getting the basics right. And that is what this week’ question is all about. What are the basics, and why do they matter? So, with that said, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Ali. Ali asks, hi Carl, my life’s a mess. I stay up all night watching TV or YouTube videos, and then wake up late and have to rush to get to work. Then at work I feel tired and unmotivated all day. What can I do to have some better habits? Hi Ali, thank you for your question. The first step would be to read James Clear’s Atomic Habits. It’s a brilliant book, that explains how habits work, how to create your own and does all that in a simple step by step approach. The next step is to understand some time tested basics. One of the many reasons why anyone would feel demotivated about the day is they are not clear on what is important to them. Not everyone wants to be supremely fit and sporty and that’s fine. You don’t have to be. But it’s equally true no one wants to die prematurely. As Steve Jobs said in his famous commencement address in 2006 "No one wants to die... even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there" To find your purpose, or simply the motivation to jump out of bed each morning go through the Areas of Focus workbook. It’s free and you can download it from my website. This will give you the eight areas of life that should be in balance. Those eight are: Family and relationships Career or business Health and fitness Finance Lifestyle and life experiences Self development Spirituality Life’s purpose Now, when I say in balance, it means defining what each one means to you. For example, for your finances area of focus could be something as simple as “I live within my means and not over spend on trivial things” or your lifestyle and life experiences could be “I live in a clean and tidy home”. Getting these eight basics of life in balance will give you some purpose each day. Living in a clean and tidy home may mean that before you leave to go to work, you make your bed and wash the dishes. To keep your finances in check, you may decide to do a weekly or monthly budget to track how you are spending your money. That becomes a habit. It’s a must-do. None of these takes a lot of time, but they help to keep your areas of focus in balance. Now onto another important factor. One of the things I’ve noticed about highly motivated and successful people is they have some structure in their lives. They wake up at the same time each day, they follow a morning routine and have some structure for the rest of the day. That could be exercising at the same time each day or just going for a walk at the end of the day to decompress. Apple’s Tim Cook, ...
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    15 mins
  • How to Stay Productive When Everything Changes

    How to Stay Productive When Everything Changes
    Sep 7 2025
    Let me take some pressure off. Your problem is not discipline. Your problem is not organization. Your problem is not that you have yet to stumble upon the perfect schedule. And your problem is not that the folks at home demand too much of your time. The problem is this: there’s not enough time to get everything done that you’re convinced—or others have convinced you—needs to get done. That’s a quote by Andy Stanley, an author and church leader and perfectly captures the topic of this week’s episode. Enjoy. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course 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 | 384 Hello, and welcome to episode 384 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. It’s easy to create a productivity system on paper, working with theories and concepts. The challenging part comes when that system is confronted with real-life events. The upset customer who demands immediate action, a colleague off work sick and a boss who thinks you can drop everything and work on their latest wheeze. It’s not that these productivity systems don’t work, they do, it’s that a system is only as good as the person adopting it is willing to slow down and consider how important the demand in front of them really is. It’s also understanding what you have control of and what you don’t. You don’t have control over whether your daughter’s after-school class is cancelled at short notice or not. You do have control over putting in place a contingency in case it happens. In the real world, things change fast. An urgent email you received at 9:15 a.m. Is resolved on its own by 9:28 a.m. A meeting you spent all weekend preparing for get’s cancelled two hours before it’s due to begin. The list is endless. Yet, having some kind of system still helps you. And that’s what this week’s question is about. How to use a productivity system in a fast moving, chaotic world. And so, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Alan. Alan asks, hi Carl, how would you advise someone that is struggling to set up a system because their work is always changing. My customers expect me to be available all the time and my boss keeps calling meetings without any notice. I never have any time to do my work. Hi Alan. Thank you for your question. I think it was Jim Rohn that taught me to understand that there are a lot of things in life that we cannot control. Obvious ones would be the weather, or a train breaking down that prevents you from getting into work on time. Yet, there are also things like phone calls and urgent messages that can significantly change your plans for the day. This is what I suppose we call life. Life has a nasty habit of getting in the way of our plans. However, it’s always been like that. Life has always been unpredictable and yet many people have managed to deal with it. There are a number of things you can do that will help you to stay on track, yet have the space and time to deal with the unexpected when they occur. The first one is when planning the week, don’t focus on tasks, focus on objectives. What I mean by this is when you focus on scheduling tasks for the week, it’s likely 60% or more will not get done. Either you don’t have the time or things change and they no longer need to be done. Too much can change over seven days. I’ve seen people carefully schedule out an exercise plan for the week, only to pick up a calf strain on Tuesday that prevents them from doing any more running for the rest of the week. Yet, had they set the objective to exercise four times that week, the calf strain would be a minor inconvenience and perhaps to fulfil their exercise objective they could go swimming or to the gym and do non-leg exercises instead. Similarly in the work environment, if you were to plan out a project’s tasks for the week, and you keep getting pulled into a last minute “urgent” meetings, the chances are by the end of the week you will have done practically none of the tasks you scheduled for yourself. If you had instead set the objective of doing some work on the project, you would give yourself more flexibility to choose what to do given the changing circumstances of your week. This way, although you may have only done three things on the project you still completed your ...
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    14 mins
  • The Art of Showing Up Every Single Day

    The Art of Showing Up Every Single Day
    Aug 31 2025
    “I'm not gifted. I'm not smarter than everybody else. I'm not stronger. I just have the ability to stick to a plan and not quit.” That’s a quote from Jonny Kim. A Navy SEAL, Harvard educated medical doctor and NASA Astronaut. All of which was achieved before he was thirty five. Now the key part to that quote is “the ability to stick to a plan and not quit” And that’s the topic of this week’s podcast. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course 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 | 383 Hello, and welcome to episode 383 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. It took me many years to learn that the best things in life never happen by accident. They are the products of slow steady work. Becoming a lawyer or a doctor is not about making a decision in middle school and then miraculously ten years later you’re performing in the Supreme Court or surgery in a top hospital. It takes years of slow steady study, experiencing ups and downs and frequently wanting to quit because it’s hard. Yet that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s hard because as human beings we thrive when we have a goal that requires us to work hard consistently. Jonny Kim is remarkable because he did three incredibly hard things. Yet, to achieve all of them required him to follow a simple process of study and preparation. It wasn’t impossible. All it took was a steely determination to achieve these things, being consistent and, to take control of his calendar. And that’s what this week’ question is all about. How to do the the hard things consistently so you start to see progress. So, let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Joe. Joe asks, hi Carl, the one thing I find incredibly hard to be is consistent. I’m great at setting up task managers and notes apps, but after a few days, I stop following the system. How do you stay consistent? Hi Joe, thank you for your question. There could be two parts to this. The first is what I call the “Shiny Object Syndrome”. This is where you see every new tool on YouTube or in a newsletter as something that promises to solve all your productivity and time management problems. We all go through this phase. In many ways, I think it’s important to do so. This way you learn the limitations of tools and find out, the hard way, that no tool will ever do the work for you. You also discover that the more addictive the tool (I believe they call it “sticky”), the less work you will do. For me, Notion was a classic example of that. When Notion first came onto my radar around 2018, I was fascinated. I downloaded the app and began setting it up. It was exciting. Far more editable than Evernote or Apple Notes. There were all these cool things you could do with it. Change the font, the colours, the background, create increasingly more complex dashboards and so on. On that first day, I spent eight hours “setting it up”. It was later that evening I realised that if I were to use Notion I would never get any work done. I’d always want to play with it and try and get it to show me what I wanted to see, when I wanted to see it. A goal I was never likely to achieve. So, I deleted the app. It came down to one very simple thing. Do I want tools that will help me do my work or not? Well, the answer was I wanted tools that got me to work fast. And that was not going to be Notion. The tools that best promote solid work are boring. They have no flamboyant features. They just do what they are meant to do. In other words they are so featureless the only thing you can do is get on and do the work. I rather envy those people who have the time to be constantly changing their apps. I know from experience that transferring everything to a new app takes time. And then there’s the learning curve, although I suspect that’s where the dopamine hits come from. I certainly don’t have the time to do that. I’d prefer to spend my free time with my family, walking or playing with Louis or reading books. The other area where a lack of consistency comes in is when you have no processes for doing your regular work. Humans work best when they follow a pattern. If you’ve ever learned to ride a bicycle, you will remember it was difficult at first. You were wobbly, probably fell off. Yet, if ...
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    15 mins
  • Stop Chasing Work-Life Balance - Do This Instead

    Stop Chasing Work-Life Balance - Do This Instead
    Aug 24 2025
    "There's no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences." That’s a quote by former GE CEO, Jack Welch. This week’s episode is about finding balance in our lives. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course 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 | 382 Hello, and welcome to episode 382 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. It’s always fascinated me how so many people see the attainment of a “work-life balance” as their goal in life. Yet, that balance is easily achieved if you know what is important to you, are clear about your core work activities, and take control of your calendar. I’m reading Dominic Sandbrook’s brilliant book State of Emergency: The Way We Were, Britain 1970 to 1974. In Britain in the early 1970s, the economy was in dire straits. The labour unions were fighting the employers and the government, inflation was rising uncontrollably and unemployment was becoming a serious problem. Nothing the government tried worked and often made things worse. Yet, despite all these travails, people got on with their lives. They went to work, came home had dinner with their families or dropped into the pub to meet up with friends. At weekends kids went out to the cinema, or hung out on the high street with their friends. Parents would potter around their gardens or attempt DIY projects at home. Balance was a given. Work happened at work. Home life happened at home. There were clear boundaries. Today, it’s easy to find people being nostalgic for those halcyon days, yet they weren’t all great. There were frequent power cuts (power outages), droughts, and the incessant strikes meant often people couldn’t get to work, or their workplace was closed because of the strikes. Having a work life balance shouldn’t be a goal. It should be the way you life your life. There’s a time for work, and a time for your hobbies and family. Not in a strict sense, but in a flexible way. This week’s question is about ho to achieve that with the minimal amount of effort and fuss. So, to get into the how, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Isabelle. Isabelle asks, Hi Carl, I’m having a lot of trouble trying to balance my professional and personal life. I never seem to have time to meet my friends, and often skip going to the gym because I have to finish my work late in the evenings. What do you recommend someone do to regain some work/life balance? Hi Isabelle. Thank you for your question. One of the most effective ways to start this is to create what I call a “perfect” week calendar. This is where you create a new blank calendar and sketch out what you would like time for each week. Begin with your personal life. How many times do you want to go to the gym, how much sleep do you want each night, and how much time you want to spend with family and friends? Add these to your calendar. Then sketch out how you would like to divide up your work time. How many meetings per week, how much time can you spend on admin and communications each day and time for doing deeper, focused work. Once you have done this, you will get to see if what you want time for each week is realistic. I’ve found most people who do this exercise discover that they are trying to do the impossible. You only have 168 hours a week. And you do not have to do everything you want to do in those 168 hours. Before coming to Korea, I used to go to watch Leeds Rhinos Rugby League team every home game. In those days, those games were usually held on a Friday night. This meant, every other Friday, I’d make sure I left work on time, got home, changed, had a quick dinner, then went to pick up my friends and off we went. After the game we’d call into the local pub for a few beers before going home. During the season, we made it a non-negotiable event. It would have been unheard of for any of us to miss a Friday night game. If I had urgent work to finish, I would rather go back into the office on Saturday morning to finish it off than miss a game. That was the mindset. Those games and meeting up with friends were non-negotiable. And that is the first lesson here. If there is something you want to do, then make it non-negotiable. Of all the productivity and time...
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    14 mins
  • Hobby-Less and Stressed: Why We Need Real Activities Again

    Hobby-Less and Stressed: Why We Need Real Activities Again
    Aug 17 2025
    "Think of yourself in a concert hall listening to the strains of the sweetest music when you suddenly remember that you forgot to lock your car. You are anxious about the car, you cannot walk out of the hall, and you cannot enjoy the music. There you have a perfect image of life as it is lived by most human beings." There, Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello reminds us to focus on the magic in front of us. What are you doing to switch off, and if you cannot do so, how can you do it? That’s why we’re looking at this week. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The Time-Based Productivity Course 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 | 381 Hello, and welcome to episode 381 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. How often do you completely switch yourself off from tasks, projects, emails and messages? And not just professional emails and messages and tasks, it includes all the WhatsApp messages from friends, strangers and the home projects you promised yourself that you would do this weekend, but never did? It seems we’ve found ourselves caught in the to-do trap. Where the only thing on your mind is all the things you’ve listed somewhere that you think you must do. It’s a horrible existence. As soon as we sit down to relax, our phone reminds us there’s more to do. More emails and messages come in, task manager reminders pop up on the screen with a bing telling us we’re supposed to call this person or that one. And given that we now carry our phones around with us everywhere we go, it’s as if the phone no longer serves us, but we serve it: jumping to its every whim and beep. The problem here is that it’s not something you suddenly start doing. It’s a gradual creep. It begins with waiting for your daughter to text you the time her train arrives at the railway station, to suddenly worrying about whether a customer or your boss sent you last minute Teams message before the end of your work day. You’e got to check right? And before long, you feel intensely uncomfortable if your phone isn’t in your hand or near you. It’s then when you have gone beyond experiencing a healthy relationship with your digital devices. It’s time to unravel all those now ingrained impulses. And that’s where this week’s question comes in. And that means 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 Maggie. Maggie asks, hi Carl I see all these productivity YouTube videos, and listen to a lot of podcasts, but very few of them ever talk about how to switch off at the end of the day and relax. This is something I am really struggling at the moment with. Hi Maggie, thank you for your question. You’re right, I rarely see videos or hear podcasts talking about switching off and relaxing. I do sometimes hear people saying to stop and relax, but not how to do it. As I mentioned a moment a go, this is not something we just stop doing. It creeps up on you. One moment you’re a child without any digital devices, being curious, running around, trying new hobbies then falling asleep to suddenly being held hostage by task lists, projects and long lists of thing you think you should do. Not to mention the anxiety of responding quickly enough to a friend’s text message or your boss’s email. If you think about it, while we seem to have adapted well to this new phenomenon, and appear to just accept this as the way of life, it’s really a horrible existence. Last week, I mentioned that I had embarked on a 13 hour autobiographical TV series on Lord Louis Mountbatten. The series was recorded in and around 1969, so was shot before the dawn of home computers. What I noticed was how people in those pre-home computer days relaxed. There were family board games, book reading and going out for walks and having picnics by the river. Because the only way you could be contacted was via a letter, telegram or land line phone, once you left the house you were free. And “free” in a real sense. If you were to take a walk by the river or pond or lake, you could fully engage with your surroundings and the people you were with. And family meals were important. The aristocracy in the UK would dress for dinner, and even as we went into the post-war years, there would be a ritual of adults and children washing their hands before sitting down to dinner....
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    15 mins