A Good Productivity System Knows How To have A Bad Day.

Are you trying to build a productivity system, or are you building something more resilient? This week, we’re looking at why even the most organised systems break down and how to build resiliency into your own systems. Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin

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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 | 438 Hello, and welcome to episode 438 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. Whenever I take on a new coaching client, the first steps we take are usually to get things organised so we can clear the decks, so to speak. In other words, in order to build a system, we need clear space on which to build. It’s the same if you were rebuilding a house. Before you can build the new house, you will need to clear away the old house and start with the ground levelled, while leaving the essentials such as the power, water and gas inputs. Well, it’s the same with building, or rebuilding, a productivity system; we need to retain the basics—a calendar, a task manager and somewhere to keep information, such as a notes app. Once we have a clear space to work with, we can go to work on the more important aspects of getting organised and being able to better manage the workload that is coming at us. This week’s question is about how to do just that. Clear the decks and then build some resiliency into your system so that whenever you have a challenging day, and we all have those, your system does not break down again, but instead supports you. So, without further ado, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Kelly. Kelly asks: Hi Carl, how would you go about doing a complete reset of your system? I’ve been trying to stay organised for years and have never found anything I can stay consistent with. What would you advise someone who needed to do a complete reset? Hi Kelly, thank you for your question. As a coach, it’s easy for me to give someone ways to simplify their system, keep their task manager clean and remove conflicting meetings on their calendar. I can also help them clean up their notes and files and build wonderful ways to organise their workload. I can introduce time blocking techniques that work and a lot of other remedies. I have a whole cabinet full of productivity medicine I could prescribe. But often that’s not the real problem. It can be a symptom of an underlying problem. Having a wonderfully organised system that looks pretty and clean may not always help you make the decision about what to work on next. As the saying goes, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig The problem, though, Kelly, might not be your system. It might be something a little simpler than that. In the past, I’ve talked a lot about building processes for doing your most important work. These are important because they remove one of the most common reasons why any system may break down. Never being completely confident that what you are working on is the right thing. A process allows you to pre-decide what to do and how to do it. The more you run the process, the faster and more efficient you become at running it. Take email and message management as an example. The process is simple: Clear your inbox early, then later in the day, as late as you feel comfortable, allocate some time to go through your actionable messages. There are some variables in this process. Depending on the kind of work you do, you may find you need to respond to messages a little mo