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Back to EpisodesHow To Keep Things Simple.
Description
What can you do to simplify your productivity system to keep you focused on what’s important each day? That’s what we’re looking at this week.
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Script | 343
Hello, and welcome to episode 343 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.
Oh dear, I seem to have opened up a storm with some people with one of my recent YouTube videos on managing a task manager.
That also resulted in a few questions about keeping a system simple.
The question is, what is a time management and productivity system meant to do for you?
The answer is easy—to inform you of what needs to be done and ensure you are prepared and in the right place at the right time.
When you strip productivity systems down to their basics, as long as your calendar is accurate and tells you where you need to be and when, and you have a way to see what tasks you should be working on today, you have a system that works.
Yet, it can be tempting to want more. A way to organise tasks by your energy levels or to know how many days are left until the deadline is reached, for example.
The problem here is that you have no idea what your energy levels will be, and deadlines change… A lot… and for the most part, they are arbitrarily added, which means you know they are not real deadlines—ah, more fiddling.
While all these extras are nice, there is a danger of becoming dependent on them. That’s when it becomes a slippery slope. They pull you into fiddling with your tools, which prevents you from doing the work you need to do.
Which ultimately means you don’t have time for the things you want time for.
So, this week, a very simple question and for that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Martha. Martha asks, Hi Carl, how would you make productivity simpler?
Hi Martha, thank you for your question.
The first place I would start is to clean up and organise my calendar. It’s your calendar you refer to when you need to know where to be and what you are committed to doing.
This involves removing conflicts. Conflicts occur when your calendar shows two meetings at the same time or your n