Finding Time for Big Projects and the Importance of Structuring Your Day

Do you have any big tasks or projects that just need a few days of focused work to get completed but you keep putting off? Yep, I think we all have some of those.

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Episode 290 | Script

Hello, and welcome to episode 290 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.

One of the best things you can do is to structure your day so you get your core work and routines done almost automatically. This is the most important work you have to do each day and week. But that can often create a Parkinson’s Law situation—where activity fills the time available, which means you don’t have time to work on those unique, one-off projects.

This then leads to those one-off projects being postponed and delayed particularly if there are no hard deadlines for them. 

This week’s question is on how to find the time for additional projects when you already have your core work and routines set up and getting done every day.

Now, before I hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice, I would just like to let you know that the all encompassing Time and Live Mastery course, my biggest and best course has just been completely re-recorded. 

This course covers everything from discovering what you want out of life to turning what you want into a pathway to accomplishing it. As the headline for the course says: How to create the life you want to live and find the time to live it. 

The course includes lessons on COD (Collect, Organise and Do) and building your own Time Sector System. It also also includes the Vision Roadmap, how achieve your goals and so much more. 

If you only want one course, a course you can return to over and over again, this is the one for you. You also get incredible bonuses. Free access to my Mini Course Library AND every few months I will be doing a FREE live session where you can ask any questions you have to me directly. 

This course will change your life. It will give you a direction and focus and the tools you need in order to achieve the things you want to achieve. 

Full details of the course are in the show notes. 

Okay, time for me now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Jen. Jen asks, hi Carl, I took your Time Sector System Course recently and it’s working exceptionally well for me. The only problem I have is getting one off projects completed. I am doing my core work each week, but that leaves me with little time to do some of my projects. Do you have any suggestions on how to include working on these projects?

Hi Jen, thank you for your question.

With the Time Sector System it’s about first making sure you have sufficient time for your critical work each day. If you’re not doing that, everything falls apart because you end up neglecting clients or missing important deadlines for work you are employed to do. It’s often easier to make sure you have the time for that first before moving on to finding time for unique, one-off projects. 

However, if you are employing time blocking into your system, you can dedicate an afternoon or a morning one of two times per week for project work. I do this on a Tuesday, for example. On Tuesdays, I have a couple of morning calls that finish at 9:00am, and I keep the rest of the day free for project work. I avoid scheduling meetings after 9:00am on a Tuesday. It’s only one day a week, and that leaves me plenty of spaces the rest of the week for meetings. 

However, one of the beneficial things about the Time Sector System is the automation it builds into your week. You are doing the critical tasks at the same time each day or week which means you develop highly efficient processes for doing this work. 

For example, I track my subscriber and sales data each day. I have a spreadsheet that I enter this data on and when I first began doing this it would take me around an hour. Today, I can collect all the data and enter it into my spreadsheet in around fifteen minutes. Over the years I have refined and polished my process for collecting and entering this data. 

The same goes with managing email. I used to waste so much time checking and responding to emails. Today, it’s ten to fifteen minutes in the morning clearing my inbox and around forty minutes in the afternoon replying to the actionable mails. It’s not something I even think or worry about anymore. 

So, if you are new to the Time Sector System, as with anything new, it takes time to bed in and become automatic. 

I learned to drive using a manual gearbox (stick shift), I remember when I first began driving I had to keep thinking about the gear I was in and run a mental checklist to change gear each time. It was slow, but after a few weeks, it became automatic. I don’t need to think about when or how to change gear now. It’s purely a feel thing. I can hear the engine, I know where third or fourth gear is without looking at the gear stick and I change gear as soon as I feel it’s time to change. 

And that’s what the Time Sector System encourages. Automating your work processes so you know instinctively how long something will take and can accurately schedule sufficient time for doing it. 

However, we all have these bigger one-off projects that do not fit neatly into our carefully curated week. The challenge we face is finding time for doing them. 

Over the last two weeks I have been working on the Time And Life Mastery Course update. It’s required a lot of hours recording, editing and writing worksheets. I do have a process for creating courses, but this one is five or six time bigger than my usual courses. I calculated it would require around forty hours to complete. 

Finding twenty additional hours each week is difficult. However, there are things you can do. 

First up is to accept you may have to work a few extra hours each week while you are working on this project. Last week—the final week before launch—I did a couple of sixteen-hour days. That’s not normal for me, but it’s only two days, and I knew I would need to do it if I was to get this project over the line by the end of the week. 

You can also look at your core work and decide what can be skipped. There’s always something. For example, I see part of my core work as writing a weekly blog post, doing this podcast and publishing a YouTube video each week. 

When you do the weekly planning, you can decide what can be skipped. I chose to skip my blog post. which saved me around three hours. I also reduced the time I was available for coaching calls which meant I had less feedback to write saving me around another six hours that week. 

Sometimes, I feel we are guilty of looking at things too narrowly. Does that email from your boss really need to be replied to today? Could it not wait until tomorrow morning? Instinct may tell you it MUST be responded to today, logic will tell you no it doesn’t. 

Have you ever noticed the least stressed people always appear to be on top of their work and commitments? The reason is because they structure their days. Satya Nadella at Microsoft has a well structured day that begins with a morning run, breakfast with his family before heading into the office. You can be confident he has a process and system for dealing with his emails and messages. 

Maya Angelou had a brilliantly structured way to write her books and poems. She would block out a month in her diary, book herself into a local hotel and write. She still went home at the end of the day, did her grocery shopping, cooked for her family and ate breakfast with them. It was a structured life. She only needed to do that once or twice a year. The rest of the time she got on with her core work and life. 

It’s important, Jen, to look at things in the whole. How much time do you need to complete these projects? When do they need to be finished? How long you need may be a guess, but based on your experience it’s likely to be an educated guess. 

If you estimate you need twenty hours to complete a project, then break it down over a couple of weeks. That means you need to find ten hours each week. If you accept you may need to work an extra hour each day for the next two weeks, you’ve just found yourself ten hours. Then it’s about finding one extra hour in your day. Could you cancel a few meetings—or postpone them? Could you put other work on hold for a couple of weeks? 

There’s a lot of ways to find an extra hour or so each day. However, if you are not sitting down at the end of the week and planning out the next, you will find your week is hijacked by other people and work, and will mean the project does not get done. 

I remember when I redecorated the bedroom in my home back in the UK. I blocked a weekend out for doing it. I made sure I had the paint, rollers and brushes before I began and I told all my friends I would not be available that weekend. I planned out that I could strip the wallpaper and apply the undercoat on Saturday. I could eave it overnight to dry and I would apply the top coat on Sunday. 

It didn’t go exactly to plan. Stripping the wallpaper was a lot more difficult than I expected, but after an 18 hour day on Saturday, the room was primed and ready for the top coat on Sunday. 

One of the great things about that weekend is I still remember it and I look back on it fondly. It was the first time I had redecorated a room, I had the radio on all day, I got covered in paint and ate an amazing pizza on Saturday night feeling incredibly proud of myself. I didn’t worry about what was going on outside. My total focus was getting the room finished by Sunday night and that is exactly what happened. 

And you know what? While I was cocooned in my home painting, the world did not end. Nobody was angry with me because I was not available for a couple of days and life went back to normal that Monday morning, except, I had a completely redecorated bedroom that I completed in the two days I allocated for it. 

So, Jen, if you have projects that need completing. Make sure when you do your weekly planning you set aside sufficient time to work on it. If necessary reduce some of your core work and inform the people that matter you will be less available while you complete the project. 

I hope that helps and thank you for your question. Thank you to you too for listening and don’t forget to check out the Time And Life Mastery course. It will change your life. 

It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.