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Your Time, Your Way

Your Time, Your Way

Von: Carl Pullein
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Showing you ways to get control of your time through tested techniques that will give you more time to do the things you want to do.Copyright 2024 Carl Pullein International. All rights reserved. Management & Leadership Persönliche Entwicklung Persönlicher Erfolg Ökonomie
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  • How To Fix The Top 5 Productivity and Time Management Pain Points

    How To Fix The Top 5 Productivity and Time Management Pain Points
    Sep 6 2026
    What are the top 5 pain points with time management and productivity that over 400 of my past and current coaching clients have faced? The results may, or may not, surprise you. Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin You can learn more about the Planning Course here Use the coupon code: planning26 Learn more about the Productivity Academy Learn more about my private coaching programmes here 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 | 432 Hello, and welcome to episode 432 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. Before we get started, and linked somewhat to today’s topic, one of the top issues among the people I work with is inconsistency in planning weeks and days. Now, I understand why it can be a challenge to plan your week consistently. Life often gets in the way, and really, what’s the point of planning when, too often, whatever plan you set gets destroyed by an inconsiderate boss or client? Yet it still remains the case that those who consistently plan their weeks and allow a little time each day to plan the next day are the ones who get the right things done on time and have more time to do the things they want to do. So, over the last few weeks, I’ve been updating my Planning Course. It’s not a long course, and it now focuses on three main areas of planning. Daily, weekly, and project planning. Plus, given the time of year, I’ve added a bonus section on the Annual Planning Template. If you want to take a significant step up in your time management and productivity, I highly recommend this course. You can get it as part of my Productivity Academy Membership or buy it as a standalone course. And if you’re fast, you can get the standalone course for just $50.00 with the early bird discount. (I’ll put the link and the code in the show notes for you) And a quick tip. Get the course today and do the Weekly Planning Section. It will take you around 15 minutes to do the section, will give you a downloadable Weekly Planning Matrix sheet and will inspire you to do a proper, practical Weekly Planning Session today. Okay, on with the episode. Last week, I hosted the inaugural live training of my Productivity Academy. In that session, I shared some research I had done on around 500 of my past and present coaching clients. The question I asked was: “What were the top five struggles (or pain points) they faced?” The results were not unsurprising, or not that I thought. What surprised me was that the cause of those pain points almost always comes from the same place. Let me explain. First, what were the five? They were: In 5th place, Tool overload and fragmented workflows This means using multiple apps, duplicating task lists, having unclear homes for information, and excessive system tweaking, which undermined trust in their productivity setup. All of this results in information all over the place, which causes a sense that they lack clarity and control. In 4th place, Interruptions and lack of protected focus time Meetings, emails, messages, emergencies, and context switching push deep or important work out, leaving no time for doing that important work. Yet one irony is that if the focused, strategic work were prioritised over interruptions, there would be fewer interruptions. Nobody chasing you, telling you something was urgent, and less time for meetings because the work was getting done instead of being talked about. In 3rd place, Unclear priorities If you don’t know what matters most, the urgent or “loud” work of other people will always crowd out meaningful progress. If you do not know what your priorities are, then someone else’s priorities will do. At least they appear to be urgent, right? In 2nd place, Planning and review routines that don’t stick When daily and weekly planning are skipped because, perhaps, life gets busy, it causes your system to break, which then requires repeated restarts. Restarts are time-consuming, often overwhelming and never address the underlying problem. (Which we will come to in a moment) And in 1st place… Wait for it… Overwhelm from competing tasks and projects My clients face large backlogs, scattered lists, frequent rescheduling, and a persistent sense of being behind. Now, as I said those five issues, I am sure you were nodding along to many of them. But the question is, why? Why do these pain points keep popping up? The simple answer is a lack of clarity on what is important to you. Let me explain. I value punctuality. It is a standard I have had since it was ...
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    18 Min.
  • Why You Never Have Time for Your Most Important Work

    Why You Never Have Time for Your Most Important Work
    Aug 16 2026
    When filling up your car with fuel, how do you know when it’s full? Well, the fuel filler nozzle clicks off. A sensor triggers the fuel to shut off. Yet did you know that the sensor is programmed to trigger when the fuel tank is 85 to 95% full? There is an intentional air pocket left in the tank to accommodate the fuel’s natural expansion due to heat. Now ask yourself: how do you know when your calendar is full? Do you have a safety gap to allow for unexpected events that will naturally occur in the week? Most people do not, and that’s what we’re looking at this week. Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Learn more about the Productivity Academy Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived Plan Your Week With Me: The Weekly Planning Matrix. 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 |429 Hello, and welcome to episode 429 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 was a time in the 2010s when hustle culture took hold, and the dream was to become the next “tech-bro”, as they were called. This meant working 18-hour days, seven days a week, with calendars bursting with meetings and every minute scheduled for whatever work these dreamers did. It didn’t work. Pretty soon, the hustle culture trend morphed into a self-care trend, when rest and relaxation became the priority, not the stuffed calendars and 18-hour days. Remnants of these trends still exist. There are people adopting AI and building apps today, in the hope that they will be the next hyper-successful business leaders. And a cursory look around YouTube will show you plenty of videos about slow living and mindfulness. And as with most things, there’s a happy medium somewhere that, when found, brings you the success you wish for without the burnout, stress and overwhelm. To find that happy balance requires one observation. Your natural capacity. And that’s what this week’s question is all about. So, it’s time for me now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice. This week’s question comes from Sarah. Sarah asks, hi Carl, what would you advise someone who never gets round to doing their most important work because their calendar always fills up with meetings. I was promoted last January, and since then all I seem to have been doing is sitting in meetings every day. I never have time to stop and think about strategy or even reply to my messages and emails. Hi Sarah, thank you for your question. This is a very interesting question, as you may have noticed, I’m a little obsessed with calendars. That’s because it dawned on me a few years ago that it doesn’t matter how many tasks are on my task list or how many articles, notes or reports I should read if I never have the time to do or read them. The only thing that really matters each day is how I will spend my time. And that means the only productivity tool available to me is the calendar. You see, your calendar is honest. It cannot lie to you. All you get are the 24 hours each day, and you plot out how you will spend the hours. Now, I know it’s not always that simple. Some of you will discover that people can schedule meetings on your calendar without your knowledge, and many of you will likely already have some recurring meetings that happen every week or even every day. So, technically, it’s unlikely that you will ever begin with a blank calendar. However, if you allow someone else to control your calendar, that is where many of your time management and productivity problems begin. You bypass a key part of managing your calendar—the decision stage. Let’s break this down. When someone makes a request on your time, you have a decision to make. It’s a simple yes/no decision, but it’s an important decision all the same. Do you say yes and accept the commitment, or do you say no and reject the commitment? If you say no, that’s it. It goes no further, and it doesn’t end up on your calendar. If you say yes, you make a commitment, and that commitment goes onto your calendar. This applies whether it’s a meeting or a task. Tasks still require time. They may not initially go on your calendar, but they still need to be done, which means you will have to find time to do them at some point. So, every time you take on a new commitment, you are putting more pressure on your capacity. Your capacity is the work you can realistically do each day or week. And we all have a capacity. Now, this introduces an issue most people miss. Every commitment you accept has a time cost beyond the actual thing itself. A one-hour meeting, for example, often ...
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    15 Min.
  • Are You Overcommitted Without Realising It?

    Are You Overcommitted Without Realising It?
    Aug 30 2026
    An overflowing task manager and a crowded-out calendar are rarely ever caused by using the wrong tools. The problem happened well before you entered the task or added the appointment to your task manager or calendar. And that’s what we’re looking at this week. Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Learn more about my Productivity Academy Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived Apollo 13 Lunar Module Start-up Procedures 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 |431 Hello, and welcome to episode 431 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 were to look at your appointments for tomorrow right now, how much time do you have that is not already committed? Two, three, four hours? Now look at your task manager: how many tasks are overdue or scheduled for tomorrow? In the uncommitted time you have tomorrow, are you confident you can complete all those tasks? Most people who do this little exercise, if they are being honest with themselves, will answer “no chance”. And this is the top reason why so many people are struggling with time management and productivity today. And there is a word for it: Overcommitted. It’s not the tools they use or any other complex reason. It’s simply because they’ve allowed themselves to become overcommitted. This week, I’m looking at how this happens and what you can do to unravel the problem so you are operating within your natural capacity, not overworked or under pressure, and not feeling like you are sinking under the weight of unrealistic deadlines and commitments. So, to get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Douglas. Douglas asks, “Hi, Carl, I know you tell people to keep their task manager clean and tight, but I find that impossible. I’m collecting 20 or more things into my inbox each day; I often have 4 or 5 hours of meetings, and I have to deal with at least 130 emails and messages each day. How would you get all that under control?” Hi Douglas, thank you for your question. I did some quick maths on the numbers you provided and noticed that if you are collecting, on average, 25 new tasks a day, have 130 emails and messages to deal with and only have 3 ½ hours of non-meeting time each day, that would mean you would have only 1 minute and 13 seconds to spend on each item. Yet those numbers assume you are not taking time for lunch or coffee or a glass of water. If you were to include a 30-minute lunch break and 15 minutes to get water and coffee each day, that would leave you with less than a minute available for each email, message, and task. Is that realistic? Based on that quick calculation, the issue here is one of capacity. You’ve no capacity left. All that’s needed to completely destroy your day is an urgent, last-minute meeting request, an issue that prevents you from doing any of your planned work or simply an IT problem that doesn’t allow you to do the work you planned. I can assure you, Douglas, you are not alone here. There are millions of people all around the world struggling with the same thing. They’re overcommitted. Which is why it’s completely irrelevant what tools you’re using. The first thing I would advise someone in this situation is to do the maths I did above. Now, I know I do not have all the information. I don’t know what work you do, your position in the company, or whether you lead a team. But what I do know is you’ve gone beyond your natural capacity, and now you will be building up enormous backlogs. You will be struggling to meet your deadlines, and I bet when you get home you’re exhausted. This exercise will tell you how much capacity you have. If the meetings you attend each day are non-negotiable, you will need to find a way to reduce the number of tasks you receive. Which means you will likely have to do something uncomfortable. Reject requests. Now I know this is very hard to do. Nobody likes disappointing someone. But the choice is: either you disappoint them when they ask, or you disappoint them when you cannot deliver what you promised on time. And I think failing to deliver on your commitments is the bigger disappointment. Think of it this way. If you say no and they ask someone else who can deliver, then you’ve actually helped them. Sure, your pride may be slightly hurt, but this isn’t about your pride. This is about setting yourself realistic expectations on what you can and cannot do. However, there is another possible solution. Cap your daily meetings....
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    13 Min.
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