What is Personal productivity All About?

Hello and welcome to episode 183 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.

I talk a lot about productivity and time management on this podcast and yet I don’t think I have ever answered a question about the actual mechanics of improving both. So this week, that’s what I am going to do.

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Full details of the bundle are in the show notes.

Okay, it’s time for me now to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question.

This week’s question comes from Shelly. Shelly asks, hi Carl. I hear a lot about how we should be improving our time management and productivity, but I don’t really understand what all this is about. To me, productivity is something you hear about in factories not in an office. Could you explain what the fundamentals of all this is about and, more importantly, why I should care?

Hi Shelly, Thank you for your question and don’t worry, I am sure a lot of people feel the same way you do.

Let’s start with the easy one. Time Management. The truth is you cannot manage time. Time is fixed. We all get the same amount of time each day and there is nothing we can do to change that. The only thing you can manage is what you do in the time you have.

However, that does give us something to work with. If we work eight hours a day and we have an amount of work to do all we need to do is start at the top and work our way down. I know this sounds incredibly simplistic, but it works.

Now, it was much easier to do this in our paper-based days. When we had letters instead of email and physical file folders instead of digital folders on a computer screen. In those dim distant days, we could see our work. Today, a lot of our work is not easily seen.

However, that does not mean we cannot manage it. Today, we need to make our work more overt. To do that all you need is set yourself up with a to-do list. This can be digital or paper-based. It does not really matter, but what does matter is you collect everything you have to do on to this to-do list.

Now, how do you make this work so you are better at managing your activities in the time given?

There are a few ways to do this and it really depends on the kind of work you do. However, the most important part of this is to schedule some time on your calendar for doing your work. This is the part most people miss.

I know a lot of people are great at collecting all their work into their to-do list but are terrible at making sure they have enough time to do the work.

Let me give you an example. Most people get a lot of emails and the emails that require replies can take up as much as two hours a day. If this happens to you, how do you expect to reply to your emails if you don’t have any time blocked on your calendar for doing it?

Time does not magically appear. You have to allocate time for these activities.

I need about an hour each day to reply to my emails, so I have a one hour time block each day for replying to my emails and any other messages. There’s no way I would be able to stay on top of my email if I didn’t have that time each day.

The next part to your question comes into play now, Shelly—productivity.

What is productivity, well first we need to change this a little and call it “personal productivity”. Personal productivity is completing meaningful project or goal work to the standard you expect and on time.

Now we do not want to be confusing personal productivity with busy work. Busy work is the meaningless work we do. Rearranging your to-do list because you are ignoring tasks and telling yourself if you could just see these tasks on a different list you would do them. No, you won’t. Stop fooling yourself.

Or meetings you attend that do nothing to improve your projects or move anything forward. Often these meetings are just meetings to exercise your managers’ egos. Stop attending these meetings. Find excuses and do something meaningful instead.

If you allocate time for doing your work, and you do it, you will find you get more work done and that means you become more productive.

Every successful person you know does this. From Isaac Newton, who incidentally wrote, Principia Mathematica while in lockdown during the plague in the 18th century, to Elon Musk today. They schedule a time to work on their meaningful projects.

There’s no secret here and there is nothing complicated about it. These people were and are ruthless with their time. They understand the value of each minute of the day and they will not allow anything or anyone to disturb them when they are working on their projects or goals.

Now, this does not mean you block out the whole day and ignore all demands on your time. That would be impossible. Most of you will have bosses, colleagues and clients. But it does mean you allocate two to three hours a day for doing your work undisturbed and if you try this, rather than trying to find excuses why you are so different to everyone else (you’re not) you will find it a lot easier than you think.

So if you really want to improve your overall productivity, you need to allocate time for the work you have to do. It’s no good “hoping” you will have time, hoping is not a sustainable strategy. Hoping you will have time is a one way street to burnout, stress and overwhelm.

So, what else can you do that will help you get more out of your time and be more productive.

Two areas most people ignore is sleep and health. If you are not getting enough sleep and you are not moving or doing any kind of exercise, you are not going to be very productive. You will feel lethargic, your mood will be all over the place and your energy levels will be at rock bottom. Not the best way to be if you want to improve your overall productivity.

Getting enough sleep and exercise requires time, and as with getting your work done, you need to make sure you have this scheduled. Now it might be asking too much to be scheduling your sleep, but you should have a sleep routine. It could be you go to bed at 11 PM and wake up at 6:30 AM. If that is what you decide, then you need to stick to that routine.

Likewise, for exercise, schedule it. If you don’t, you will run out of time and not do it.

Your sleep and health need to be a part of your life. It is just something you do. Reading about the routines of great people in history, you will discover that they fixed their routines for sleep and exercise. Charles Darwin, for instance, woke up at 8 AM every morning and went out for an hour’s walk before settling down to a period of focused work.

Even Winston Churchill, not known for his physical fitness, would do his work in the morning, have a long lunch but would then go outside and do something manual such as building a wall or some gardening and taking a ninety-minute nap before dinner.

The right amount of sleep and exercise has always been a fundamental part of what makes incredibly productive people productive.

It’s far too easy to forget about our personal lives, but your personal life is more important than your professional life.

I’ve known people dedicate twenty plus years to a single company. Then one day the company decides to restructure—or gets into financial difficulties and these people have gone. Some may get what we call a golden handshake, but any money you get as redundancy or compensation will not last long. No matter how loyal you are to your company, that loyalty will never be returned—not in today’s world.

Now, this is not the companies fault. It’s our fault. My parent's generation, on the whole, stayed with one company for all their working lives. In return, these companies guaranteed a job for life. Today, we—the employees—jump from one company to another seeking bigger salaries and more time off. So, of course, companies have changed. No longer do they expect an employee to stay with them for their whole working lives so they are less willing to invest in you.

So another part of your day needs to be spent on your own personal development. Here you work on your personal skills. So many people get left behind while the world moves on and this can be avoided if you just give yourself thirty minutes or so to develop your skills each day. That could be reading, taking an online course or even watching a YouTube video.

Netflix or Facebook might be attractive, but neither of these will save your career or keep you fit and healthy. Time spent in front of the TV is time you are not working on yourself. Always remember that. Time is fixed, what you do with your time is your choice. Choose wisely.

So, if you want to improve your productivity and time management, become more strategic about how you use your time. Time is fixed. We cannot change that, but we can decide what we do with our allocated time each day. If you choose to use your time gossiping with your co-workers, that’s a choice you made. But you cannot then later complain how you don’t have time to do your work. You do have time. Do your work first, then if you have time left, by all means, gossip.

And don’t allow yourself to fall into the “hope to find time” trap. You will never find more time. It does not exist. If something needs doing allocate time for doing it. Whether that is dealing with your email and Slack messages, calling clients or reading important documents. If you must do it, then allocate time for it.

Hopefully, that helps, Shelly. Thank you for your question and thank you for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.