The Definitive Guide To Reducing Anxiety, Overwhelm and Busy-ness.
This week it’s all about calming down an out of control productivity system.
Script
Episode 129
Hello and welcome to episode 129 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 do hope you are all doing well and staying safe. It is in times of difficulty when the best of us comes out. Now is the time to stand up and be a leader and set an example for everyone around us.
Now this week, I’ve received a few emails and I’ve had a number of people ask this question on this subject—or a similar question— and that is one where the productivity system itself has become overwhelming and is now the problem and not the work being thrown at us.
Now, before I do go into this week’s question, I should point out that if you also find your productivity system has become bloated and overwhelming now would be a very good time to take or retake, my FREE COD productivity course. COD (Collect, Organise and Do) was created with simplicity at its heart. It was born out of my own experiences creating a monster of a productivity system that In itself became the problem that demanded more and more of my time every day.
The COD course will take you through the basic set up of a simple system, explain what you need (and by omission what you do not need) and show you, in outline, how to manage your work so you spend more time doing and less time organising and processing.
So if you haven’t done so already, get yourself signed up. It’s completely free and don’t worry, it is not a sales pitch designed to get you to sign up for ever more expensive courses. It is a course designed to help, not sell. And most important of all, it will show you the essential components of building a productivity system that works for you.
Okay, it’s now time for me to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice for this week’s question.
This week’s question comes from Helen, Helen asks: Hi Carl, I’ve been following your work for some time and wonder if you can help sort out the mess I am in. I am using Evernote and Notion for my notes, I also have to use Microsoft OneNote for my work and I also use Todoist for my personal tasks and Microsoft’s new To-do for my work tasks. It all just feels so overwhelming. Is there anything I can do that will help me to feel more in control?
Firstly, thank you, Helen, for sending in this question.
Now, where do we start? The best place to start is recognising there is a problem and in this case Helen, you have done that. You have recognised you have a problem.
A good place to start is to calculate how much time you are spending organising and processing each day. Under normal circumstances, you really should only be spending twenty to thirty minutes, maximum, processing and organising your work. The rest of the time you should be doing the work.
A lot of overwhelm is self-inflicted. We spend more time adding than taking away. What we should be doing is looking at subtracting instead of adding.
Asking questions such as ‘do I really need this app?’ And ‘Is this adding to or reducing the amount of work I do each day?’ Are helpful in determining whether or not your system is the cause of the problem.
Also, look at the tasks themselves—do those tasks really need doing or can you combine them with other tasks—picking up your prescription at the same time as doing your weekly shopping. Replying to your actionable email while waiting to pick up your kids from school, for example.
Problems are also caused by us wanting to see a lot more than we need to see. And there is a difference between what we would like to see and what we need to see.
What you need to see is a simple list of tasks you have prioritised to do today. Nothing else. What we like to see often can be a list of tasks labeled to be done at the office and at the computer. What we have planned for the week, progress of a specific project and a whole bunch of other stuff. The problem there, of course, is seeing all that stuff doesn’t move anything forward and just causes anxiety, overwhelm, distraction and a feeling of being busy. Not exactly a good mental state to be in.
The time to be looking at future work is when you do your weekly planning session and to a less extent when you do your daily planning. 95% of the time on a day to day basis, you should only be seeing what you have prioritised to do today. That’s all that matters right now.
Tomorrow’s tasks are irrelevant at 9 am today. Tomorrow’s tasks only become relevant tomorrow. Stop looking. Focus on today’s tasks today and tomorrow’s tasks tomorrow.
You see, you are dressing up procrastination and calling it “planning”. Looking at next week’s tasks on a Tuesday afternoon when you still have Tuesday tasks to do is not planning. It’s procrastinating. There is a time for planning when a project or an idea needs developing and the associated tasks can be pulled out and put into your to-do list. But if you are constantly looking at what's coming up tomorrow, later in the week or next month and you still have tasks today’s tasks to do, you are procrastinating. Stop doing that. Do the tasks you have assigned yourself to do today and only go looking for more when you have completed those tasks.
Now many people have become so conditioned to checking and rechecking that there is a feeling of comfort in this action. A kind of delusion has set in—being convinced that all this checking and reviewing is somehow making them more productive. It’s not. You need to snap out of that thinking. Planning, reviewing and checking have their place, but that should never be at the expense of doing the work.
It’s similar to the same situation I find people who want to start a blog or YouTube channel. An awful lot of time is spent thinking, planning and thinking again and doing more research and more planning. You see all that planning, research and thinking is not doing. Nothing is being written or recorded. So nothing is happening.
Again, planning, researching, and thinking have their place and they are important. But none of that should ever get in the way of actually doing. For me, if I find myself planning and thinking beyond a few hours I see that as a trigger to analyse why I am not doing. I’ve learned from experience that having an idea, spending a little time thinking and planning it out and then doing it often leads to something special. My blog, this podcast and my YouTube channel all had a few hours of research and planning, but they only ever got off the ground and started when I sat down and started writing or recording. It was those first few attempts that gave me far more momentum and information than whatever I read, watched or planned.
So be very careful not to use ‘I just need to do a bit more research’ as an excuse not to start doing the work that matters. You’re going to learn a lot more from doing than you ever will from researching.
Now for the one that creeps upon us and we are not aware it is happening. Too many apps.
This one has become a much bigger problem for many people over the last two or three years because we are so lucky to be living in an age where I feel human ingenuity and creativity are at a peak.
There are so many amazing apps to choose from out there. From Notion to Bear Notes, from Things 3 to Microsoft’s ToDo. All of these apps have sprung up in the last two or three years and promise so much. It is so tempting to add one of these tools to our system.
And of course, we convince ourselves that we absolutely must have this new app because it is going to plug a gap we think we have in our system. Notion to me is the biggest culprit here because it promises to be all things to all people. It’s a task manager, a personal wiki, a note-taking app, a research tool and a place to play around with building creative lists.
The problem here is because Notion is all things it is not one thing. So we add it to our toolbox and do not eliminate any of our existing tools. So now, not only do you have a to-do list and a notes app to keep up with and maintain, you now have Notion to keep up with and maintain too. You’ve just added more processing and organising time and done nothing that optimises the time you spend doing.
When you have tools that duplicate each other you put a lot of drag on your overall system. When you collect something where does it go? Which to-do list? Which notes app? Which calendar app? That’s a lot of decisions to make. And if you are in a rush and you collect something, how do you remember where you collected it?
This is why I preach you need one to-do list, one notes app and one calendar app. You do not need multiple apps that do the same thing.
If your company requires you to use Outlook and Outlook calendar, then make Outlook calendar your calendar app. Likewise, if your company collaborates using OneNote, use OneNote as you notes app. Don’t use OneNote for Work and Evernote for personal. You are just overloading your cognitive load and you just do not need all that complexity.
If you are serious about becoming better organised and more productive, then drop your excess apps. Pick one. One to-do list, one notes app and one calendar app. That’s all you need. You may have a lot of work to do, but you are not a multinational conglomerate responsible for over 100,000 employees and millions of customers. You are an individual with a number of tasks to perform each day and a limited number of hours in which to do those tasks. You do not need all these distractions and complexity.
Focus on the work you have decided needs doing today, keep the apps you use to a minimum and reduce the amount of distractions and interruptions you get as best you can. Doing that will reduce your overwhelm and busy-ness and improve the quality of your work faster than another app will do. It leaves you feeling much more relaxed fulfilled and ultimately a lot happier.
I hope that has helped, Helen. Keep things simple and you will be fine.
Thank you for the question and thank you to all of you for listening. Don’t forget to have a look at my FREE COD course—details of which are in the show notes— and please stay safe. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.