There's so much advice out there. How do you know what productivity method to follow welcome to the Paw miners podcast the show that will help you to optimize your time income and lifestyle fast get more done with actionable easy to follow advice and learn how to live life on your terms and now introducing your host Paul minors. Hello everyone and welcome back to the pool - podcast to episode number one.Hundred and forty-one, or I'm asking the question which productivity method should you follow? This is one of my favorite times of the week. I love recording this podcast. It's Monday its content day, which I'll be talking about in this episode and I love sitting down and being able to record this podcast. So there's no doubt. There is a lot of advice out there about how to be more productive. Perhaps you've been told probably by me, you know to block your tasks on your calendar. Maybe you've tried things like the Pomodoro Technique or you've read about getting things. He's done GT D and some people will tell you no to write down three absolutes for the day. There is so many different methods and techniques for being more productive and these methods this is what I refer to as like a productivity method all these different techniques. I called them productivity methods and these really are these methods really just Define how you do your work. There's more than one way to skin a cat as they say and when it comes to managing your workload and your productivity, there's no shortage of methods to choose from there's multiple ways to be productive. The truth is there's no one best way to manage your productivity and you probably need to try a few methods to find the thing that works for you and your personal style. I will talk about this on my podcast and with clients all the time so much of productivity is personal style and preference. There is no best way people often are looking for that Silver Bullet, but the method you choose May is going to differ depending on the type of work you do and perhaps even the time of day or week as well. And so today I'm going to be exploring some of the different productivity methods out there how I use somehow I think about them and how you might go about adopting various methods. If you want to read the corresponding blog post or just get access to the links of anything mentioned in this episode. You can find those at poor miners.com /a hundred and forty-one. So firstly I'm going to talk about using time blocking to be more proactive and less reactive because when we're doing our work this kind of two states that we can be and we can be in a Proactive or reactive State being proactive. This is where I think you're being very intentional with your time. You're planning ahead to decide what's worth. Khan and how to get everything done I say you are the one in control when you're being proactive when your reactive on the other hand. This is where you are responding to things in real time. Your work is being determined by the need to respond to things outside of your control other people. And so while being reactive may seem like a bad thing that can hurt our productivity. It's often a requirement of a lot of our jobs. I get that may be included, you know, and so depending on the urgency or the importance of a task that will determine when you need to respond. Do something now and be reactive or whether you can wait and come back to it later and kind of postponed and plan ahead that's being more proactive. And so the key is to get this balance right? Because I'd say most people spend too much time being reactive and not enough time thinking about their priorities and planning their time and being proactive. And so this is what leads to that lack of productivity and always having to kind of catch up and so if you want to be more proactive, this is where we can use different productivity methods that I talked about to help with different help us with Sweeney's different modes and last week. I was actually having a call with a client who's often in a reactive mode and during a day. He's answering phone calls from clients. He's responding to employees who need to who come into his office and he asked me how he should manage his time so that he can still be reactive like this because he needs to be but still get his own work done. But as well, how does that how do you balance these two things? And so we talked about the benefits of time blocking and I've got a link in my show notes for the post. I wrote in the video. I've done around time blocking and how this can be used to plan. When you're going to work on different tasks now, he can't take time blocking to the extreme that I do and some people can't even stand time blocking he but he has a team of he has a team of many people and many clients to manage and so his work requires that he be in a reactive mode at least, you know some of the time but he can use time blocking when it suits him. He may not use it all the time. But when it suits him he can use time blocking to carve out periods of time for his own work or priorities and the rest of the time he can leave his Calendar open and blank and you know take a phone call or chat to an employee of him if he needs to and he actually said to me, he's really good at putting going to the gym on his calendar. He sticks to those he'll put going to the gym on the counter and he's really good at going to the gym at those times. And so I said right now we just need to apply that same thinking to one or two tasks a week where you can put that task on and go right now. I'm not going to take any phone calls. I'm not going to listen to anyone and I'm going to sit down and do my do my thing and I said to him it's okay to break the rules sometimes, you know often I'll have a client asked if They can talk to me tomorrow. I actually literally this afternoon I was trying to this was a brand-new client. They hadn't even signed up and paid for me and she said can I talk to you this afternoon? And I said and I had to sort of while I could have taken her call. I had to sort of say well actually sorry, it'll have to be next week. I've already planned to do things like record this podcast. And so, you know when something like that happens I look at my calendar and I have to make a decision on whether am I happy to push back some of my own work to free up time for a client which I often do but other times I will be more protective. My time like in that example and so it really depends on the urgency in the importance of my work and the client as well. And so it's just not a decision. You have to weigh up. You know, it's okay to break the rules and move things around if you need to that's time blocking and I think like I said, it really helps us to be more proactive and less reactive which I think most of us spend our time in. This episode of the poor miners podcast is sponsored by front. Now the number of in boxes we have to deal with on a daily basis has become pretty overwhelming. Most people have multiple email addresses social media accounts to check and now add to the mix a situation where maybe you need to collaborate with a few people to work on the same inbox at once maybe if you work in sales or customer support now in the past teams have tried to manage a shed in box using labels or folders or by cc'ing messages and emailing each other back and forth and it's a real nightmare. Trust me. I've been in these situations before the good news. Is that with front? 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So I've connected it with pipedrive and Asana which means I can really easily create new contacts deals or tasks right from inside front you can get started today. For just $9.99 to front app.com /p MP to start a free trial and thank you front for sponsoring this episode of the poor miners podcast. And then there's things like getting things done and I borrow a lot of Concepts from getting things done. As you may have seen in my Asana training videos on YouTube. I've Incorporated a few Concepts from DTD into my own system. I really like this idea of like next actions. Next actions are small little tasks. I can complete in a few minutes. There aren't really time-sensitive and I will just do them when I get a chance and I also like from GTD this concept of waiting having a waiting list. These are sort of tasks that I need to do, but I'm waiting on this sort of on hold because I'm waiting for somebody. To get back to me on them. And so these two things and actually the weekly review as well. I've been doing that for I don't even know six or seven years. I think I can't even imagine finishing my week without going through this ritual. And so while I don't strictly follow GTD because it's quite a strict sort of methodology. I've adopted the parts of the system that work for me and then there's things like the Pomodoro Technique and I think this is a great for helping us stay focused. Now some people swear by the pimp Pomodoro Technique if you haven't heard of it, this is where you work in 25 minutes. It blocks of time and one block is sort of called a pot Pomodoro. And the goal is to focus on one thing for the duration of that Pomodoro and not get distracted. Some people will even keep track of the number of times they get distracted and they work to reduce the distractions each time. And when the Pomodoro ends you take a 5 minute break to have it just a quick break get some water go to the Loo and then switch to the next thing now, I've tried working like this, but I can't get into it. I don't like having to stop every 25 minutes, I think. Short and I don't want to have to take like a mandatory break to make it work and just due to the nature of my work as well. Like I'm often are on a few back-to-back calls and it just doesn't really fit with the format of my work with calls like this. I have nothing against the Pomodoro Technique. It's just not for me and so other people love using the pommel Pomodoro's to stay more focused and reduce task switching. So if you are someone that tends to be distracted easily, it's a nice technique you can use to build focus and discipline. So another great method it really Depends on how you like to work in the type of work that you do as to whether you adopt this or not. And then the final one I wanted to talk about was this concept of theming your days again. I've mentioned this before and actually was ever since I interviewed Mike vardy back in episode number 9 of this podcast years ago. I've really liked this idea of theming your days and this is where each of the each day of the week has a particular theme of work that you focus on. So for example, like I said at the start Monday is my content day. So with the time difference to the United States, which is where most of my clients are for most of my clients is Sunday and they're not working so I can use this day to work on content like blog Post this podcast just before that. I did a video in fact today. Basically I've done I've written a post for this podcast. I'm recording it now and I made a video about zapier which will go up later this week as well. It's this whole day is about it's about content and this doesn't mean that I'm not doing other work on a Monday. It just means that the overarching focus for the day is content and ever since Mike Riley on the podcast share this idea with me. I've really lent enjoyed this idea. Another example is Wednesday again, I've mentioned this before Wednesday is my project day. This is where I actively work on my own projects and non-client work got a few big projects on the go at the moment of in had an SEO audit done on my website and migrating to convert kit as well few big projects that I'm working on at the moment. And generally I'll try and carve out Wednesday's to work on that kind of thing other themes could be things like, you know Administration client work creative work planning Focus time, whatever it is that you do and even depending on your job. There are gonna be other things that maybe you need to do that. I haven't haven't listed here, obviously. Just like with time locking sometimes again, I break the rules and I don't stick to my themes, you know, I'll often have to schedule the odd client call on my project day. But with all the different productivity techniques, you can use it's okay to your deviate when the situation calls for everything. That's okay. So in summary, I think you know when experimenting with different productivity models and methods and planning your work. It's okay to try a few things bar the ideas from different methods of the things that work for you and don't worry too much about what other people are doing. You know, we are we're all operating in different conditions. Missions we all have different jobs and responsibilities the best system or method is the one that works for you that helps you to achieve that balance between proactive and reactive - and it's funny, you know on last week's podcast. I interviewed K as I've said, I'm a big advocate of time blocking K. Can't stand time blocking. He actually recently published a video on YouTube about why he doesn't like time blocking and I saw that and I was like Kay we're going to do a debate to actually coming up in the next couple of weeks. I'm going to be recording a video with K about the pros and cons of time blocking and it's around this. My dear, you know, there are these different methods are they all have advantages and disadvantages and it's about choosing the one that works for you and weighing up, you know, what's going to work and what your personal style as well. So we have that I have that video coming up in the next few weeks to keep an eye out for that. So what do you think you have any questions thoughts comments. Do you have a favorite productivity model that I haven't mentioned here. There are loads after all I've really just mentioned a couple here head on over to the show notes poor. Miners.com 141. Leave me a Mint let me know your thoughts comments and feedback. I really do love hearing from you from you. You can reach me on Twitter at Paul Miners And if you're on my email newsletter list respond to any of my emails one more time, thank you very much for listening. As always. I appreciate your time and attention and I will catch you next time on the poor manners podcast. Thank you very much for listening to the Paul miners podcast two quick things before I go firstly if you enjoyed this episode or if you have any feedback, please leave me a review on iTunes. It really does mean a lot to me because it helps the show to get discovered so that more people can benefit from the content and I would love your help getting the show out there. So please if you have a minute, I would love a review on iTunes and on that note if you want to give me any more feedback, you can always reach out to me via my blog. Leave me a comment or if you're on my newsletter list you can Spawn to any of my emails as well. 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You’ve probably heard loads of advice about how to be more productive. Perhaps you’ve been told (probably by me) to block your tasks onto your calendar. Maybe you’ve tried the Pomodoro technique or the Getting Things Done (GTD) method. Some people will tell you to write down “three absolutes” for the day or week. These techniques are what I refer to as “productivity methods” which define HOW you do your work. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat” and when it comes to managing your workload, there’s no shortage of methods to choose from. The truth is, there’s no one best way to manage your productivity. You probably need to try a few methods to find the thing that works for you and your personal style. The method you choose may even change based on the type of work you’re doing. Show notes » PaulMinors.com/141 Download my productivity blueprint and learn the processes and tools I use to be more organised and achieve more in my business and home life. You'll also get my FREE 3-part video training series where I'll explain 1) 4 simple steps to supercharge your productivity 2) common mistakes to avoid 3) the 10 productivity tools I couldn't live without. Download here » paulminors.com/products/productivity-blueprint/ If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast. Doing this will help more people discover the show so they to can get more done and get more out of life. 