This week, why you should not be copying other people’s systems. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived Subscribe to my Substack Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 347 Hello, and welcome to episode 347 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 is a lot of advice on managing your to-dos, organising your notes and controlling your calendar. And it can be tempting to copy whatever you have seen, believing if it worked for someone else, it must work for you. Well, not so fast. One thing I’ve learned from coaching hundreds of people is that no individual is the same. We think differently, have different jobs, and have different family lives and interests. One example is Tiago Forte’s PARA method. It’s a great way to organise your notes, and many people swear by it. However, it never worked for me. I’m a goal-orientated person. Goals motivate me. I also define Areas of Focus differently from how Tiago defines an area. This is why I settled on GAPRA (Goals, Areas of Focus, Projects, Resources and Archive.) This does not mean that PARA does not work. It works, for some people. Similarly, I have coaching clients who find GAPRA works better. It all depends on how you think, like to organise things and do your work. So, what can you do with so much conflicting advice? How can you find the methods for you? Well, before I get to that, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Frank. Frank asks, hi Carl. I’ve been a life-long follower of productivity systems and have struggled to find a system that works for me. How would you advise someone to find a way that works for them? Hi Frank, thank you for your question. Around 20 years ago, I began my career as an English teacher in Korea. I had come from working a typical 9 til 5 office job and suddenly I was on the other side of the world, working from 6:30 am to 12:00 pm and 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm. It was tough. I’m not a natural morning person—never have been—so waking up at 5:00 am was a shock to my system. It wasn’t long before I began taking naps. I would get home at 12:30, and go straight back to bed for two hours. For the next ten years, that’s what I continued to do. I had learned about the power of taking naps from none other than Winston Churchill. He believed that if you took a solid 90 minute nap every afternoon you would be able to get at least a day and half’s worth of work done in a day. He wasn’t wrong. By taking an afternoon nap I found I was full of energy when teaching in the evening and was able to spend an hour preparing for my next day’s classes when I got home in the evening. Yet, I knew Churchill took his naps between 3:30 pm and 5:00 pm. That didn’t work for me. So I adapted it to work better for me. Likewise, back in 2016 or so, I read Robin Sharma’s brilliant 5 AM Club book. I was sold. I thought, okay, let’s give this a try. For those of you not familiar with the 5 AM Club, this is where you wake up at 5:00 AM and do twenty minutes of exercise, then 20 minutes planning and finally 20 minutes of learning. It’s solid way to begin your day. Yet, I had a problem. I’ve never been comfortable exercising in the morning. So, I adapted it. I did twenty minutes journal writing, then ten minutes planning the day and finally studied Korean for thirty minutes. And it worked. I was consistent for around eighteen months and I loved it. But then I hit a problem. My coaching business began taking off and I was doing coaching calls late at night—sometimes not finishing until midnight. This meant I was trying to survive on four or five hours of sleep. Not a good thing if you want to be productive. It then occurred to me, the “secret” to the 5 am club is not waking up at 5 am. It’s what you do immediately on waking up that matters. Today, I wake up around 8:00 am, and start my day with a solid set of morning routines that include journal writing, some stretches and learning my email inbox. It works perfect for me. It sets me up for mostly productive days. And that’s the key point. Whatever you learn about productivity, time management and living life doesn’t have to be followed exactly as described. We all live different lives and it can be modified to better work for you. However, there are a few caveats here. The first is you will not be able to break basic principles. For ...
