Focus Time and Daily Planning

So, you’ve created a fantastic system for keeping yourself organised and on top of everything being thrown at you, and you’re happy with the apps you have that support you. Now, how do you stay consistent using your system?

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Episode 246 | Script

Hello and welcome to episode 246 of the Working With 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 for this show.

A common issue I come across with becoming better organised and more productive is staying consistent using the system you have developed. 

The fun part of becoming more productive and better managing your time is the setting up of a system, choosing the apps you are going to use and getting stuff into that system. The hard part is staying consistent with it over time. 

The problem is once the excitement of creating something new is over, you still have to do the work and the work has to be done day after day. That’s the boring part and it’s then that most people’s systems break down. 

This week’s question is all about this and I hope my answer will shed some light on another part of a strong, supporting system that often hides in the shadows but needs to be developed so your system disappears into the background and a process of doing your work comes to the foreground.

That means it’s time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Greg. Greg asks, Hi Carl, for years I’ve been searching for a productivity system that I can stick with, but I have never been able to stay with any system. I’ve tried them all from GTD to your Time Sector System. It’s always exciting at first believing this time I have the right one, only to find after two or three months I’m a disorganised mess again. Am I missing something?

Hi Greg, thank you for your question.

I don’t think you are missing anything essential, but you may be missing one element. That element is a process.

Let me explain. Your productivity system is only a system. It’s a place to collect things you need to pay attention to. Things like email and messages that require replies, tasks that come your way and meeting requests that need to be put on your calendar. 

However, a productivity system is just that, a system. Once you have that in place you need to develop the processes that allow your system to work and it’s the process that is boring. It’s just something you do day after day. 

However, while at first following a process can be boring, over time it disappears into the background and becomes more of a habit you no longer need to think about. A task comes to mind, and you collect it into your task manager. A meeting request drops into your inbox and you check your calendar to make sure you have the time to attend the meeting. These actions are done automatically without thinking.

Unfortunately, to get to that point, you have to go through boredom. It’s boring to look at the same list every day and check off the tasks. It’s boring to sit down for ten minutes at the end of the day and plan the next and it’s boring to review the same projects week after week in a weekly planning session. 

Once the excitement of a new system and set of apps disappear, you’re left with having to do the work and that’s not fun. 

I’m reminded of a story Simon Jefferies, a former British Special Forces soldier talked about when he was going for selection to the special forces. The first part of that selection process is two weeks in the Welsh mountains in the UK where every day you are given a map reference point, which you have to memorise, a heavy backpack and told to get there within a certain amount of time. The problem is, you don’t know how long you have to get there. Oh, and each day the weight of your backpack is steadily increased. 

Simon talked about simply focusing on the process. Waking up at 4:30 AM, preparing his feet, putting his boots on and doing the climb. When he finished, he made sure he ate a meal that would aid recovery, sorted his feet out, washed and dried his socks and got to sleep as quickly as he could. 

His goal was to pass selection and he knew if he followed a process every day and focused on getting through the day, he would achieve his goal. 

It was boring, but it helped him through the relentless pain, tiredness and boredom of climbing up mountains every day. 

Most people quit—to give you an example, around 200 people start selection every year, and by the end of that first two weeks, 60 to 70 per cent have dropped out. 

Giving myself ten to twenty minutes at the end of the day to process my inboxes and plan for tomorrow is boring. But I also know the consequences of not doing it. Not knowing what my important tasks are for the day and where my appointments are before I start the day never leads to a good result. Something will inevitably be missed and that always leads to a lot more work as I scramble to get back on top of my work. 

My goal is to have an effortless day. To get my most important tasks done and to move projects forward. I know, that those ten to twenty minutes at the end of the day give me an advantage and stack the odds in my favour. Not doing it leaves me vulnerable to the unexpected things I should have known about and missed appointments and tasks. 

Following the process is not about the new and shiny apps, it’s about doing the work. New apps, and new organisation systems don’t help you do your work. They destroy your productivity because you are having to learn how to use these new apps, transfer all your old data across and deal with the unfamiliar. The more familiar you are with your apps and system, the more productive you will be. 

So how do you build days that feel effortless? Well, start the day the same way each day. I recommend you develop a morning routine that you enjoy—something to look forward to. For me, that’s a cup of coffee and sitting down for ten to twenty minutes with my journal. For others that could be ten minutes of meditation, a walk in nature or some exercise. Choose things you enjoy doing. 

The first forty-five minutes of your day needs to be dedicated to you. If you have a young family, adjust your wake-up time so you get your morning routines in before your kids wake up. It’s about making your morning routines a non-negotiable part of your day and not something you will sacrifice at the first opportunity. 

Next is to find a period of two to three hours each day for deep, focused work. Now this applies to weekends too. You may not be focusing on your work-related tasks on a weekend, but there are always things that need doing around your home on a weekend. Treating weekends differently to the working week will not serve you. Morning routines are done seven days a week, not just for work days. The same applies to your two to three hours of deep focused work. 

Us humans were not designed to sit around all day doing nothing. We’ve evolved to be incredibly smart, flexible organisms and our bodies need movement. Now we are not talking about 180 mile bike rides or 20 mile runs on a weekend, but a gentle walk for thirty to forty minutes, cleaning your home and going out to the supermarket for the weekly shop all things you could build into your weekend routine. 

Now, as for when you do your deep focused work, that will depend on the kind of work you do. For me, I have control over my schedule each day so, I fix my focused work for between 9:30 and 11:30 AM. I also have another focused work session between 7 and 9pm. That’s the nature of my work. I create content and coach people. I do my calls generally later in the evening or early in the morning and I protect my afternoons for exercise and errands. 

For you it may mean you need to find two to three hours of focused work between 9 am and 5 pm. I would try to do your focused work as early in the day as you can. It’s less likely those unexpected emergencies will arise in the morning—they have a habit of rearing the ugly heads in the mid to late afternoon. 

Now, this is where your daily planning and focus time connect. It’s during your daily planning, that you decide what needs to be done in your focus time. Don’t leave it to chance. If you do that, you’ll open up your tasks manager and look for something to do and you will be presented with a long list of tasks. Inevitably you will seek out the easiest tasks. What you do in your focus time needs to plan in advance so that when the time arrives, you get straight into it. 

The biggest challenge with all this is it takes time to develop the processes and develop habits. Following this advice for one day is a great start, but it has to be repeated the next and the next until you do it without thinking. I cannot imagine going to bed not knowing what I need to do tomorrow. Equally, it would feel incredibly strange not to wake up in the morning, make coffee and sit down for at least ten minutes to write in my journal. These are habits I’ve worked on for the last five years or so. 

Now you might think finding new apps to play with is all part of the fun, and in a way, you would be right. But that approach is never going to improve the thing you want to improve—your time and task management. However, when you focus on your processes for doing your work, you will find not only do you get the joy of creating something yourself, but you also get to tinker and optimise your processes over time. 

I’ve been down the road of app switching and while there is an initial buzz in setting up a new app, it will inevitably descend into disappointment when you discover something you used in your old app doesn’t work in your new app. And then the search for another new app starts. 

Building your own processes is far more fun. You have ownership of the process, you get to share it with your colleagues and it will grow with you. 

I hope that has helped, Greg. Remember, you won’t find what you’re looking for in a new system or app. You will find what you are looking for in your processes. Look at these, build your own and enjoy the process of optimisation and fine-tuning.

Thank you for your question and thank you to you too for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.