Episodes

  • Stop Drifting: Turn Your 2026 Ideas Into Reality

    Stop Drifting: Turn Your 2026 Ideas Into Reality
    Nov 23 2025
    Back in October, I gave you the five questions to ask yourself before 2026. In this special follow-up episode, I share with you what you can do with the list you have been building over the last two months. 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 | 394 Hello, and welcome to episode 394 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. Hopefully, you’ve started creating a list of things you want to change and or do in 2026. If not, it’s not too late. If you missed that episode, the five questions are: What would you like to change about yourself? This question is focused on you, your habits—good and bad. What would you like to change about your lifestyle? This is about how you live, the material things, if you like, such as your home, car and other possessions that improve your lifestyle. What would you like to change about the way you work? The professional question. Perhaps you want to learn more about AI, or change jobs and work from home, or maybe go back to working in an office. What can you do to challenge yourself? What could you do that frightens you slightly? This question is designed to help you move out of your comfort zone. What goals could you set for next year? Realistically, what could you accomplish next year that has alluded you? The idea behind this exercise is to give you time to think a little deeper and discover where you are happy and where you feel things need to change. Now, one thing you will find helpful is to go back to your Areas of Focus. There, you have your definitions of what family and relationships, health and fitness, career, lifestyle, self-development and others mean to you. Often, you will find that by reviewing these eight areas, you will find something you have neglected over the previous twelve months. As I’ve been helping my coaching clients with this exercise, it’s surprising how many of them have discovered neglected areas. This is quite natural, given that once the year begins, we can easily get caught up in the day-to-day crises. Then we drift away from our good intentions. In a perfect world, you would give yourself two months to reflect on these questions. To explore options and talk with your family. But don’t worry if you have not started yet. There’s still time to develop your thoughts and ideas. Now, some people have asked me where best to capture these ideas. Over the last two years, I’ve written these questions out in the back of my planning book. This book is always on or near my desk, and I have captured a lot more ideas this way than I ever did digitally. So, my advice to you is: if you have not started this exercise, grab yourself a notebook, write the five questions as headings, and over the next few weeks, allow yourself to think about them and write down your ideas. Right now, it’s less about what you write out and more about just getting everything written. And there’s a very good reason for this. If you do this exercise over a few weeks, what you will discover is that a theme will develop. Let me explain. Last year, I failed at getting back to fitness. During 2023, I reduced my exercise time to focus on writing Your Time Your Way. I also wasn’t very careful about what I ate, and as a consequence, my weight ballooned. Last year was supposed to be the year I got back into shape, and I failed miserably. So, last year, as I went through these questions and captured ideas, I soon found that health and fitness were common themes. This meant when I began 2025, my focus was to get back into shape and not repeat the mistakes I made in 2024. And it worked. I went from touching 88 kilograms (around 195 pounds) in January to where I wanted it to be—80 kilograms (around 176 pounds) by the middle of July. To do that, I needed to change a few habits. Moving more and locking in a consistent exercise time were the obvious ones, but I also looked at my diet and removed all processed foods, replacing them with natural foods—real vegetables, fruit, and fresh meat. Given that around Christmas and the end of the year are quiet times for me, I reviewed my calendar and moved a few things around to accommodate my new routine. Another example, I remember two years ago, a client of mine was struggling to grow her side business. It was causing her a lot of frustration. One idea she wrote down was to work harder on her ...
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    13 mins
  • Why "Disciplined People" Don't Feel Disciplined

    Why "Disciplined People" Don't Feel Disciplined
    Nov 16 2025
    “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going." That’s a quote from one of my favourite people, and a friend of this podcast, Jim Rohn. Listening to one of his lectures—for that is what they were—in 2017 changed my life, and I hope this episode will change yours. Let’s get started. 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 | 393 Hello, and welcome to episode 393 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. Discipline is unsustainable. You probably have discovered that. Yet there are many people we look at and see someone living what many would describe as a disciplined life. So how do they do it? Well, I can promise you it’s not discipline. Discipline is like a rocket used when launching a spacecraft—it’s required initially to get the spacecraft off the ground, but once in orbit, the rocket can be discarded. Then the balance between forward velocity and the Earth’s gravitational pull maintains the spacecraft in orbit. And that’s how these outwardly “disciplined” people do it. They decide what it is they want to accomplish—healthy eating, regular exercise, journal writing, daily and weekly planning, etc. And then they “launch”. A lot of effort and focus is required initially, but after a few weeks, their forward velocity—or the habit—takes over and it becomes something they just do. And you can do the same. And this week’s question is about how to go from an idea to turning that idea into something you will “just do”. 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 Anna. Anna asks, Hi Carl, for the last three or four years, I have done your Annual Planning exercise. And each year, I fail to accomplish the things I set out to do. I feel I don’t have the discipline to keep my commitments. There’s always something else that gets in the way. How do you help people start to live a more disciplined life? Hi Anna, thank you for your question. As I alluded to a moment ago, it’s not really about discipline. That’s a fuel that will run out eventually. Sure, it can get you started, but if you don’t develop the habit or routine over a few weeks, the consistency you want will slip away, and you’re back at square one. The problem with discipline—and, for that matter, motivation—is that they rely on the human condition. For discipline, you need willpower. Willpower diminishes throughout the day. You start with strong willpower, and as the day goes on, that power slowly wears down. But it is also dependent on how much sleep you got, whether you are in a good or bad mood, whether you are stressed or anxious, and the people around you. You may have heard the advice to ditch your “toxic friends”. They are the ones who keep pulling you down to their level. If someone were attempting to give up smoking, the advice given is to stay away from their smoking friends. If you surround yourself with people who hate exercise and you decide, for example, you want to take up the “from couch to 5K” programme, you’re not going to find a lot of support from the people you surround yourself with. They have become what is known as “toxic friends”. Instead of thinking you need discipline to achieve the things you want to achieve, look at what you can do to make achieving your goals easier. Imagine you decided you wanted to read more books. Many people will set the goal to read a certain number of pages or chapters each day. This method requires immense discipline to maintain consistency. You see, people often set these goals when they are rested, unstressed, and motivated. What you need to think about is what a realistic target would be if you were tired, unmotivated, and just wanted to curl up and scroll through your phone. A better approach would be to set a time target. For example, one of my clients wanted to finish reading the pile of books in his home office this year. He had around thirty-five books he’d bought, and they were real books, not ebooks. I suggested to him that he set a target of reading for 20 minutes every evening before going to bed. This, he felt, was realistic on days he was tired out. Speaking to him last week, he said he had discovered that on most days he read for well over 45 minutes, and on some days he ...
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    14 mins
  • When Everything Falls Apart: How to Recover Your Productivity System

    When Everything Falls Apart: How to Recover Your Productivity System
    Nov 9 2025
    “When I was Leader of the Opposition in the UK and some time out from an election which we were expected to win, I visited President Clinton at the White House. As we began our set of meetings, he said: “Remind me to tell you something really important before you leave.” I was greatly taken with this and assumed I was about to have some huge secret of state imparted to me. As I was leaving, I reminded him. He looked at me very solemnly and said, “Whoever runs your schedule is the most important person in your world as a Leader. You need time to think, time to study and time to get the things done you came to leadership to do. Lose control of the schedule and you will fail.” I confess I was a little underwhelmed at the time. But he was right.” That’s an extract from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s book. On Leadership: Lessons for the 21st Century. And it’s perfect for the theme of this week’s episode—finding time to do the important things. 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 | 392 Hello, and welcome to episode 392 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 nice when our systems work. We follow our plans for the day and the week, and when we arrive at the end of the week and look back, 80% or more of what we set out to accomplish is crossed off. Unfortunately, those weeks are rare—even for the most productive of people. There are far too many unknowns that will pop up each day and week for us to consistently get what we plan to do, when we plan to do it, done. But that doesn’t mean that productivity systems are a waste of time. They are not. A solid productivity system keeps you focused on what’s important to you and gives you a way to prioritise what matters most. And it doesn’t matter where you are in life. You might be nearing retirement and in the early stages of preparing your business for sale, or you could be starting out on a university graduate programme. There will always be things to do, some important, some less so. The key is to remain consistent with your system so you know each week, you are nudging the right things forward, even if you’re not getting everything done. And that leads me to this week’s question, AND… The Mystery Podcast Voice is back! So, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Serena. Serena asks, Hi Carl, I have implemented productivity systems to keep me on track with my academics as a graduate student, and they have worked well when I consistently followed the steps. The problem is that when I get stressed out, I fall behind on deadlines. When the weekends come, I just want to decompress and do nothing. What can I do to get back on track with the system and continue to practice good personal productivity practices? Hi Serena, thank you for your question. When I was at university, we had four core subjects each semester. It was on these that we would be expected to write essays and be examined on at the end of the academic year. This is nice because from an organisational standpoint, class times will be predefined for you. They would go onto your calendar. These become your weekly commitments. And while you may not know the deadlines for the essays at the start of the semester, you will know roughly when they will be due. That would be the same with your exams; you may not know the precise date of the exams at the start of the academic year, but you will know roughly when they will be held. This is often the same for many of you in the workplace. You may know which quarter a project deadline falls in, but you may not know exactly which date the deadline will be. One thing you do know, though, is that there is a deadline. Now, whatever we are working on we all have four limitations to deal with. Time itself, there’s only 168 hours each week. The fact that you can only work on one thing at a time, our emotions—sometimes we’re just not “in the mood” —and, as humans, we get tired and need to take a break. There’s nothing we can do about these four limitations. You can “optimise” the human things though, ensuring you get sufficient sleep being the obvious one, and becoming as stoical as you can be in any given emotional situation (a lot easier said than done) Given that one of the “fixed” ...
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    14 mins
  • What Matters Most: How to Find—and Defend—Your Priorities

    What Matters Most: How to Find—and Defend—Your Priorities
    Nov 2 2025
    "Prioritise what matters. You can't be everywhere, do everything, and have everything!" That’s a quote from Oprah Winfrey, and it captures the essence of this week’s question. 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 | 391 Hello, and welcome to episode 391 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. You arrive at your desk, open up your Teams messages or email, and your screen fills with line after line of unread (and read) messages. One message grabs your attention, it’s from your boss and you feel compelled to open it. And from that one action, your whole day is destroyed. And while I am sure that message from your boss was important and potentially urgent, but did it really warrant destroying your day? That scenario is happening every day to millions of people, and it makes deciding what your priorities are for the day practically impossible. So, what can you do to ensure you are acting on your priorities and not being distracted by what appears to be both urgent and important? Giving some reflection, putting aside that so-called urgent message might actually be the best thing you can do. So, with that said, let me read out this week’s question (The Mystery Podcast Voice is on holiday this week). This week’s question comes from Michael. Michael asks, hi Carl, I really struggle to decide what I should be working on each day. My work is very dynamic; a lot can be thrown at me each day, and whenever I plan my week or day, none of it ever gets done. What’s the best way to prioritise? Hi Michael, thank you for your question. In many ways, what you describe is what I see as the curse of the modern world. The incredible advances in technology have enabled us to do seemingly impossible things, yet they have also sped everything up. I remember just twenty-three years ago when I worked in a Law office in the UK, and if we received a letter (remember them?) from another lawyer, we effectively had around twenty-four hours to compose our response—even if what was being asked was urgent. We relied on the postal service, and no matter how fast we responded to that letter, it would not leave our office until 4:00 pm at the earliest on that day. And if we missed the 4:00 pm deadline, tough. It would have to wait until 4:00 pm the next day—which incidentally gave us a wonderful excuse for anything arriving late. The expectations from the “other side”, as we called them, were that they would receive the reply two days later. Today, just twenty-three years later, those two days seem to have fallen to just two minutes. What went wrong? The problem is that no matter how well planned our days and weeks may be, owing to others’ expectations, we are “expected” to respond within hours, sometimes minutes, not days. This has blurred the line between what we know is important and what is simply urgent noise. This is why it’s more critical today to be absolutely clear about what is important to you. And I emphasise the words “to you”. What’s important to you is not necessarily important to another person. When someone requires you to do something for them urgently, it’s urgent to them, not necessarily to you. You may have twenty similar urgent requests waiting for you. You are expected to decide what is the most urgent. That’s an almost impossible decision to make—if you don’t know what’s important to you. So, the important place to start, Michael, is to establish your areas of focus. These are the things that are important to you, and they are based on eight areas: Family and relationships Health and fitness Finances Career and business Lifestyle and life experiences Self development Spirituality And your life’s purpose. The first step is to define what each one means to you and then pull out what action steps you need to take to keep everything in balance. These are the higher-level priorities in your life. There’s a little more to it than that, and if you want to learn more about developing your areas of focus, you can download my free Areas of Focus Workbook from my website; the link is in the show notes. Next, what is your core work? This is the work you are employed to do. Now, most people can describe their jobs. For example, I’m an architect, ...
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    13 mins
  • How a Surgeon, CEO, and Financial Advisor Mastered Their Time

    How a Surgeon, CEO, and Financial Advisor Mastered Their Time
    Oct 26 2025
    "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." That’s a famous quote from Groucho Marx and encapsulates perfectly what this episode is about 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 | 390 Hello, and welcome to episode 390 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. I’ve been coaching people one-on-one for seven years, and in that time, I picked up some ideas that, when adopted by clients, almost always guarantee they will transform their time management and productivity. None of these ideas is revolutionary, which isn’t surprising since people have long struggled with time management and productivity issues. Our attitude to time and the expectations of others has changed, but the amount of time we have hasn’t. Technology, rather than helping us to do more in less time, has elevated the amount we are expected to do. Fifty years ago, we might have received thirty letters; today, technology has elevated the number of digital letters and messages we receive into the hundreds. And while we may be quicker at responding, we’re not realistically able to respond to hundreds of emails and messages each day and still produce work. (Even though I know a number of you are trying) It goes back to what I wrote and spoke about two or three years ago, fashions may change, but the principles don’t. AI and ChatGPT are all the rage today. If you’ve gone down that rabbit hole, you will have been blown away by what it can do. It’s incredible. Yet what is it doing? It is making some parts of our work faster. Yet, most people still don’t have enough time to do all their work. What’s happening? Well, telling everyone that you can now produce a sales review presentation in less than twenty minutes with the help of ChatGPT means you are now expected to create more presentations. That sales review presentation may have taken you two days before, but now, if you can do it in twenty minutes, boom! Your boss can give you more work to do! So what are the traits, best practices and ideas that do work that the people who have seen a massive increase in their time management and productivity follow? Well, that’s the subject of this week’s question. 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 Lauren. Lauren asks, “Hi Carl, I know you have been coaching people for a long time, and I am curious to know what the most productive people you meet do that is different from those less successful at it.” Hi Lauren, thank you for your question. As I eluded to, the most productive people I’ve coached follow principles, not fashions, and are ruthless with their time allocation. Those principles are to collect everything, process what you gathered, eliminate unnecessary things, and allocate time for doing what’s left. But it goes a little deeper than that. First, you need to know what is important to you. That relates to your Areas of Focus. Those are the eight areas of life we all share but will define and prioritise differently. Things like, your family and relationships, career, finances, health and fitness and self-development. Knowing what these mean to you and what priority they are in your life goes a long way to helping you to build productive days. Almost every client of mine that has significantly improved their time management have gone through the Areas of Focus exercise and defined each one. The second part to this is to be clear about what your core work is. This is the work you are employed to do. What I found interesting is that my YouTube Short video with the fewest views is the one asking the question: What are you employed to do?” That doesn’t surprise me. Going through and defining your Areas of Focus and core work is not sexy. Quick fixes, new tools and apps are the sexy things, yet none of those will ever help you regain control of your time. Sure, they are fun, exciting and interesting to explore. But they are distractions that will never help you be better at managing your time. (I learned that one the hard way. I used to waste so much time each week playing with new apps, programmes and tools) Speaking of tools, I have noticed ...
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    15 mins
  • 30 Years Later: Rediscovering the Franklin Planner's Hidden Power

    30 Years Later: Rediscovering the Franklin Planner's Hidden Power
    Oct 19 2025
    Hyrum Smith, the creator of the Franklin planner, once said: "When your daily activities are in concert with your highest priorities, you have a credible claim to inner peace." And that nicely begins this week’s episode: what I’ve learned from my time with the Franklin Planner over the last twelve months. 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 | 389 Hello, and welcome to episode 389 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. Between October and the end of December, I like to experiment with different time management and productivity tools to see what I can learn and discover about managing my work. Last year, I chose the Franklin Planner. That has been a revelation. It allowed me to revisit how I managed my time and work while working in a high-pressure work environment with rapidly changing priorities and a constant supply of crises each day. In this week’s episode, I want to share what I learned from the experiment with the Franklin Planner and how it has changed how I manage my work and time. I was first introduced to the Franklin Planner back in 1992. My former boss, Andrew, inspired me to start using it. At that time, I also read Hyrum Smith’s Ten Natural Laws of Time and Life Management, which was a book written to introduce the planner.A From 1992 to 2009, I religiously used the Franklin Planner to manage not just my work, but my life. I remember writing in my planner the first time I had the idea of coming to Korea, and then turning it into a project in the back of the planner. All my fears, concerns and excitements were written in there. Twenty-three years later, I still look back on that decision to come to Korea as being the best decision I’ve ever made. For those unfamiliar with the Franklin Planner, let’s start with the idea behind it. When you first receive your Franklin Planner, you are encouraged to write out your “governing values”. These are the things that are important to you—values such as honesty, integrity, how you treat others and your family. From these, you can determine your performance against what is important to you and set goals based on that. This is where I got the inspiration for my areas of focus. We all share eight areas of life, which we define and prioritise differently. These eight are: family and relationships, Career or business, health and fitness, self-development, finances, lifestyle and life experiences, spirituality and life’s purpose. It’s these governing values that become the foundations of your system with the Franklin Planner. Once you have established your governing values, you can begin using the daily pages. On the left, you have a prioritised task list. Next to that, you have your schedule for the day, and on the right-hand page, you have a space to collect notes. What became immediately obvious to me when I been using the Franklin Planner, was the way it forced me to stop and think. The act of handwriting what I decided were my most important tasks for the day slowed me down and got me thinking about what was genuinely important. With digital systems, it’s all too easy to add random dates to a task, hoping that by some miracle you will find the time to do it. And I know some of you add random dates because you’re afraid of forgetting about the task, even though the task does not need to be done on the date you assigned it. With the Franklin Planner, you stop doing that. You become more intentional about what you will do each day, which ensures that you are focused on the important tasks. What I noticed was that I became much better at prioritising. It becomes annoying to rewrite a task day after day because you didn’t do it. So you either delete it or you do it. With digital systems, it’s easy to give up and move the task to another random day. And when that day comes, you don’t do it again, so push it off again and again. The other related lesson from the Franklin Planner was that you become hyper-aware of what you can realistically do each day. Because you write out your appointments for the day first, you can see, in plain sight, just how much time you have for doing tasks. If you’ve got seven hours of meetings, a concert to go to, and you want to fit in a thirty-minute exercise ...
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    13 mins
  • 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