3470: Do You Have Productivity The Wrong Way Round? by Carl Pullein on How to Eliminate Distractions

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[00:00:29] Before we start, please check out our new podcast, Good Sleep. Have you ever noticed how a calm mind can really set the stage for a good night's sleep? That's the idea behind our new podcast, Good Sleep. Greg, our host from Optimal Relationships Daily, is here to help ease you into a peaceful night's rest with some positive affirmations. And these affirmations aren't just comforting, they can help ease anxiety and nurture positive thoughts, setting you up for true good sleep.

[00:00:55] So press play on Good Sleep tonight, because a good tomorrow starts with a good night's sleep. Just search for Good Sleep in your podcast app, and be sure to pick the one from Optimal Living Daily. This is Optimal Living Daily. Do you have productivity the wrong way around? By Carl Paulin of carlpallin.com. And I'm Justin Malek, the guy reading to you every day of the year with permission from the authors. And with that, let's get right to another post, and start optimizing your life.

[00:01:28] Do you have productivity the wrong way around? By Carl Paulin of carlpallin.com. The Less is More Principle. Becoming better organized and more productive is a great goal to have. It frees up your time to do the things you want to do. Unfortunately, most people's idea of becoming more productive and better at time management is about doing more work. Perhaps, though, if you want to become more productive, you need to start doing less.

[00:01:58] Your problems begin with your to-do list. By their very nature, to-do lists encourage you to add tasks to them. The trouble with doing that is that you add tasks that are not important and do not move anything significantly forward, and these dilute the critical tasks that will move you forward on your goals and projects. Once your to-do list starts filling up, you lose sight of those critical tasks, and they get relegated to the bottom of your list. It's human nature to pick the low-hanging fruit.

[00:02:28] If you see a task that says, Sort out downloads folder, you'll choose that task over a task like, Write 1,000 words of my book. To clean out your downloads folder, you'll likely need no more than 20 minutes and not a lot of thought. To write 1,000 words of your book, you'll have to open up Word, think, and stay sat down for an hour or two. Which task are you more likely to do? To-do lists also change the way you think about your work.

[00:02:57] You get caught up in activities and not the outcomes you're trying to achieve. When you get caught up in the activities, you confuse movement with achievement, which is a false belief. Movement does not always equate to achievement. Instead of focusing on the tasks you think you have to do each day, you should focus on what outcomes you want to accomplish that day. Let's look at a simple example. Imagine you have an agitated customer.

[00:03:25] You've been back and forth with emails trying to appease the customer, but they're still not happy. You found yourself caught up in a cycle of email exchanges that are not moving anything forward. Rather than creating a series of tasks on your to-do list, such as reply to unhappy customers' email, or talk to my boss about the customer's issues, start with your desired outcome. What outcome do you want to accomplish? Your outcome could be something like,

[00:03:53] to solve this customer's problem and to turn them into our happiest customer. Now ask yourself, what do you have to do to achieve that result? In my mind, it'd be to pick up the phone and talk to the customer. If they're in a different country with a different time zone, schedule a Zoom call with them. You'll achieve a lot more and far faster speaking directly with the customer than you ever will going back and forth with email. You should approach every day in this way.

[00:04:22] What outcomes do you want for the day? When you focus on your outcomes, you find you require a lot less activity. Often the fastest way between where you are now and where you want to be is a single big push in one area and not a series of little inconsequential tasks that leave you feeling busy and exhausted and not much further towards solving the issue. My outcome for today

[00:04:48] is to finish writing my two big writing projects for this week. My result for tomorrow is to complete the seminar slide deck I'm doing next week. That is three tasks. But if I accomplish those tasks in the next 48 hours, I will have moved so much of my work for the week forward. I'll not stress whether I have time to finish the seminar slide deck or get my writing done. I know I'll get them done because these are written in my task manager and have the required amount of time

[00:05:16] blocked off in my calendar to make sure they get done. I know to achieve a particular result will require some activity. Still, if I sit down and spend 30 minutes brainstorming a list of actions to achieve that result, I'll start adding many small, insignificant tasks to my to-do list. If I start with, what is my objective here? The most important activity will flow to the top. What's my objective here? Well, to write this week's blog post.

[00:05:45] Great, open up Ulysses, my writing app, and start writing. That's what I did this morning. And here I am with a finished blog post just waiting to be edited and posted. What was on my to-do list? Write this week's blog post. That was my outcome. If you want to become more productive, then stop adding tasks to your to-do list. Think about what you're trying to achieve and make that your task. Instead of adding all your actionable emails individually into your to-do list,

[00:06:14] create a folder to hold actionable emails and have one task in your to-do list called clear my actionable email folder. That's your outcome, right? To respond to your actionable email. If you want to achieve more in less time, stop thinking activity and start thinking objectives. What do you want to accomplish today? Having one or two objectives for the day will give you far more focus and will result in many more fulfilling days

[00:06:42] than a list of tasks that might be urgent but are certainly not crucial that leaves you feeling drained and exhausted. You just listened to the post titled, Do You Have Productivity the Wrong Way Around? by Carl Pullein of carlpullein.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. Thank you to Carl, a really nice perspective. I definitely get stuck in making lists of tasks

[00:07:10] and it can feel productive, but I think he's right. If it's not making progress towards our biggest objectives, we're probably not progressing as much as we could. I think one thing that can help is tracking. It doesn't have to be permanent. So for example, if our objective is to get out of debt, which is a common topic over on Optimal Finance Daily, I think it can help to start tracking every dollar you spend, at least for a month. After that, it's not as important,

[00:07:40] but when you do it for that one month, you really get a feel for where you are. Plus there's more awareness and pressure to not spend because it needs to be tracked. It's easier to find where you can cut spending. Again, if you choose to continue to do it, that's great, but not necessary. I've been tracking all my income and expenses down to the penny since 2010, but that's because I find it pretty easy these days. If you want to use what I'm using,

[00:08:08] you can visit oldpodcast.com slash track. But I'll leave it there for today. Thank you for being here and listening every day. It means a lot. Have a great and productive rest of your day and I'll see you back here again tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.