August 6, 2025 • 27 mins
Productivity expert Carl Pullein shares routines for staying on top of all the to-dos
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
(00:24):
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am delighted to welcome Carl Pauline to the show. Carl
is the host of the Your Time, Your Way podcast.
He also teaches productivity courses, among other things. So, Carl,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, So, why didn't you tell our listeners a little
bit about yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Well, I think the most surprising thing is is that
I originally come from the United Kingdom, but have lived
in Korea now South Korea for twenty two twenty two years,
twenty three, twenty three years, yes, twenty three years. This year.
I only came for one year. I just came to
teach English. I needed to time out. I trained to
(01:03):
be a lawyer and then I went to work in
a law office and that was my first experience of
working in an office, and I felt like I was
a prisoner, you know. I had to be there from
nine till well, it's usually eight thirty till six thirty pm.
You were allowed out for lunch, but the rest of
the time there was an office manager. And it was
(01:25):
perfectly normal, by the way, at the end of nineteen nineties,
early two thousands for this to happen. And I really
genuinely felt I'm in day release prison here. So because
my previous jobs had been in hotel management, car sales,
and you know, in those jobs you just run around
all day. You weren't tied to a desk, and so
(01:47):
I thought, Okay, I need some time out because I
do I really want to spend the rest of my
career being tied to a desk. And I came to
career and that's twenty three years ago last month, and yeah,
there's no chance of going back now. I found my
forte if you like I. I fell in love with teaching,
(02:07):
and I knew that within three months that was really
what my vacate vocation was. And I've never stopped since.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, which I love. I love that you, you know,
were able to change in the middle of life and
figure out what you wanted to do. And I'm also
really appreciative that you are talking at me with you
at eleven PM your time, which is during business hours
on the East coast of the United States. Definitely challenging
to connect with that. But you know, you've had such
(02:37):
a varied career, like you said, car sales, hotel, teaching,
English law. I'm sure that you've picked up on little
things from all of these, right, I mean, there's lessons
you've taken from all these as you're teaching now.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Absolutely. I mean I think my first I mean I
fell in love with time management productivity was in middle school.
I used to I used to before computers and Excel
and stuff when I was at school. So it used
to be an a blank piece of a four paper
I'd write out a timetable for studying for when my
exams were coming. And I was absolutely fantastic at making
(03:13):
those timetables, but just terrible at revising. But that was
really where I just became fascinated with time and time management.
I also think I was quite lucky because I was.
I had a teacher at school who got me into
cross country running. Now most people hate that, but I
just maybe it's because I'm probably more introverted. So the
(03:34):
team sports. Yeah, I was okay at but they weren't
really where I excelled. As soon as I started running,
it was wow. I just fell in love with it.
And then I became quite a competitive athlete, running for
my county, which I think in the US would be state,
and that taught me. And again I was given like
(03:55):
training schedules from my coaches, so I at a very
early age I was I learned very quickly that actually
the calendar as we use it today, but the schedule
was always going to be the most important thing in life.
And then when I got working in the car sales,
I was very lucky because when of the first my
first real general manager, I mean, he was probably it
(04:17):
still is to this day, the most organized person I've
ever met. And again this was before we had all
the digital productivity tools we have, So it was this
wonderful a four leather bound desk diary that I just
fell in love with, and I went and bought myself one,
and yeah, it taught me a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Well, it's interesting you say that because that you were
drawn to productivity tools early on. I think you've also
talked about having you can correct me if I'm wrong.
Here at ADHD that as an adult, you know, you
found out and a lot of people who grow up
with that are not necessarily drawn to productivity tools. They
see it as something of a more foreign car I think.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So, yeah, I mean, I'm very lucky because ADHD wasn't
a thing was out school. I'm so glad that I
actually learned coping mechanisms without being told this is the
medicine you should take, because I probably would have believed them.
And so I developed coping mechanisms very very early on
in life, which means that there's no point in me
(05:21):
going to see doctors ABOUTD. I know I've got it.
I mean, you just read my school reports. It's pretty clear.
And yeah, I can get easily distracted. But what I
do notice, though, is that to me, the ADHD is
a superpower because I can I know now how to
engage it in order to get really focused on a project,
(05:44):
for example, that I'm working on, because just before I
went away, I was running close to a deadline for
a course I wanted to get out, and I just
I just thought, right, this is where ADHD is going
to be my best friend. And yeah, for about forty
eight hours I was completely zoned in. Nothing was going
to pull me away from it. And I'm so glad
I've got ADHD. I actually think it's the number of
(06:06):
people have got it. It's probably actually abnormal not to
have it, you know, because so many people have variations
of it. I think in many respects it's probably quite normal.
But as I say, it's to me, it's my superpower.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah. And by learning the coping techniques of planning out
your schedules for long term things, and I'm sure having
the cross country running as a way to burn off
some energy, those are probably a great combination.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
That's why exercise is still a huge. If I'm not exercising,
everything starts falling about I don't. I mean, I'm not
going out running, you know, ten miles a day or
anything like that anymore, but you know, at least thirty
forty minutes a day, I need to be doing some excising.
I'm lucky I have a dog as well, so he
needs an hour Yeah walking, Well, we will.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Get mad in a minute. We're definitely going to talk
about exercise. I wanted to ask you though, I think
I was reading of one of your ideas that you
talk about this time based productivity, And you've talked about
this issue like it's the problem with the modern world.
Like in the past, when you had to do a
great many things, you had to actually go somewhere to
do them right. And so obviously going somewhere takes some
(07:18):
amount of time, Like you can't fool yourself that you
can instantly be at the store or be at this
appointment or whatever else. You had to go there, so
you had to build in the time for it, Whereas
now a lot of the things we do could be
done whenever we have complete flexibility to choose them, and
so people don't necessarily allocate adequate time to them. Am
(07:40):
I understanding that correctly?
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, I mean one of the things this probably came
about about ten years ago when I sort of like
came up with my email processing system, if you like,
and I realized that actually the number of emails I
get per day is probably about one hundred and fifty
something like that. Of that, probably forty require me to
(08:02):
take some action. Now I've got a choice here. I
could just ignore that and let it build up. Well,
tomorrow it'll be eighty, the day after that it'd be
one hundred and twenty. I'm never going to have time
to sit down and deal with one hundred and twenty
actionable emails, no chance. But forty, I calculated, takes me
around about fifty minutes to an hour. I mean, forty
(08:23):
is just I mean some days it will be twenty.
Today it was probably about fifteen because you know it's
Sunday night for me, not I don't get that many.
But so I now allocate it just an hour a day,
and I call it to my communication time. Now, if
I don't clear all those forty emails today, it doesn't
matter because tomorrow the oldest because I reverse the order,
(08:44):
so the oldest is at the top, not the bottom.
So I'm not cherry picking. So tomorrow, I just know
if I start at the top, nobody is ever really
going to be waiting longer than say, twenty four hours
for reply. And it's worked solidly for ten years now,
and it started probably ten years ago. I was probably
only getting about thirty to thirty five emails a day,
so I've had to increase the time I spend doing it.
(09:07):
But I'm quite happy to an hour after that. Nah,
I'm not going to spend more than an hour on communications.
But I know that again, I've got an hour tomorrow
and a day after, so I'm relaxed about it. Never
worries me. There's always some little caveats, you know, if
anyone's got if there's a money issue, or there's a
somebody can't log into their account on my learning center. Sure,
(09:30):
I'm going to deal with that as soon as I
seal that email. But it only takes me like two
minutes to deal with. But the rest of the emails, yeah,
they'll wait until my usually about four o'clock in the
evening afternoon when I sit down and just do my
actionable email. But that taught me. I thought, Okay, if
I can spend an hour on communications, what about allocating
time for other categories of work that I have to do,
(09:52):
whether it's you know, I usually have three hours set
aside for recording YouTube videos. I have probably about six
hours a week set aside for writing. And it's now
so much Mondy Today Monday is brilliant because this morning
obviously my evening time. Now I didn't have to think
about what am I going to do now, it's just oh,
it's Monday's writing day. So this morning I spent think
(10:16):
about two two and a half hours of writing, got
most of my writing done. I'm happy with that.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Excellent. All right, Well, we're going to take a quick
ad break and then i'll be back with more from
Carl Poline. Well, I am back talking with Carl Pouline,
who is the host of the Your Time, Your Way
podcast productivity expert as well. So another exercise that you
(10:44):
have talked about as I was reading the description for
your recent course is the perfect week calendar? What is
the perfect week calendar?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Right now? This is because most Now, just to go
about a little bit of history, one of I was
introduced to something called the Franklin Planner in the early
nineteen nineties, probably around about ninety three ninety four. Now,
part of that you get sent on a training The
company I was working for sent me on a training
course and the first day I had nothing to do
(11:16):
with time management. I'm going I'm host to be here
to learn about time management. Why are we talking about
governing values? What's important to you? And the lens the
way the lens you look at the world through and
stuff like that. Now, back then, I'm in my early twenties.
It probably went over my head a little bit, but
I did start writing out what I felt at the
time was my governing values. Weirdly, when I look at
(11:38):
them today, I'm going, wow, ninety percent of them are
still true today. And the Perfect Week calendar is essentially
a step up from that. It's like, Okay, this is
all the stuff that's important to me, and if I
don't define that, what does that actually mean at a
task level, It's just going to never get dealt with.
(12:01):
I'm just not going to be dealing with it, because,
as you mentioned before, today's world stuff is just coming
at you twenty four seven. But if you know what's
important to you, you can then quickly filter out the
less important stuff. So the Perfect week calendar is about saying, Okay,
I want this amount of time per week to exercise.
(12:22):
I want this amount of time per week to spend
with my family, because we have family time. So there
was something I read, oh a long time ago now
about Michael Dell when his kids were young and he's
building a big computer empire. He would always be home,
I think by six pm, to have a family dinner
at seven, and then he would play with his kids,
(12:45):
and then at nine pm he'd go to his home
office and deal with any remaining stuff that he had
to deal with. I was thinking, wow, that's three hours
every single day where he has said that's it. It's
now family time blocked off. Nobody gets it's my attention
except my family. I know that Gary Vaynerchuk does it
as well. You know, he's always home for family dinner
(13:08):
time with the kids, and then he will maybe go
out and have a business meeting later in the evening.
And I realize that that means, you know, to me,
family time is also important. So it's in my calendar
because if whatever goes on the calendar gets done. That's
my philosophy. So you can design the perfect week, and
you do it for your personal life first, and then
(13:30):
you do it for your work life. What's important at work?
What's your core work? What are you employed to do?
Make sure that you've got time set aside each week
for that, because if you don't, your calendar will fill
up with meetings. And if you're spending you know, if
you work a typical four hour forty hour week and
thirty five hours are spent in meetings, when are you
(13:52):
going to do your work? So you've got to start
getting When you do that perfect week, you get to
realize just how much time you got. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Absolutely, Well we'll always talk about there one hundred and
sixty eight hours in a week, so you know, if
there are a lot of hours for doing various things,
but you have to know what you're doing with them.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
And another exercise that you also are teaching to people
is a five minute daily planning session. So I saw
that you promised that we could plan for our days
in under five minutes, which sounds exciting to me. So
tell me how I am planning my day in less
than five minutes.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Well, this again comes back to just dealing with reality.
The first place you look at is your calendar, where
are your appointments for the day, because that's going to
tell you how much time you've got to do tasks.
So if you've got seven hours of back to back meetings,
forget tasks, you're not going to do them. You might
be lucky to get to your communications, but you're probably
(14:51):
going to be eating, drinking coffee, or just exhausted. But
if you don't start with your calendar and start with
a to do list, you could easily write eighteen nineteen
tasks or got to do this. We've got to do that,
got to do this, and then you look at your
calendar and go, oh, shoot, I've got six hours of
meetings today as well. Your day is destroyed. So I
have this why call the daily planning sequence, which is
(15:12):
first look at your calendar that will tell you how
much time you've got left for doing to do or
tasks and then build what I call realistic things that
you have to do, and then prioritize that list. Now,
this is stolen completely from the Franklin Planner system. It's
they you know, they say ten to fifteen minutes planning
(15:33):
and solitude. With the digital tools that we have today,
because a lot of tasks and we can set up
to recur and stuff on our calendar can recur, you
can actually reduce that down to easily five minutes now,
and you just get into the habit of doing that
every day. Now. I say to people, do this the
night before, because you'll sleep better, You'll be you won't
(15:57):
wake up us off and go oh I've got to
do this. Oh go that you'll just be more relaxed
in the evening. The other thing is is the next
day you're ready to start. There's none of that. Oh
what do I need to do today, and that just
slows you down. It just bangs straight into it.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah. Absolutely, So do you have any routines that make
you more productive? I know you are a frequent exerciser.
That is something you do, but you do it not
in the morning, which I know a lot of our
listeners in a podcast called Before Breakfast our morning exercisers.
But that's not you.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
No, I've never been a morning I tried it, and
I never It just doesn't seem to work very well
for me. I prefer to excise mid in the afternoon,
and the moment, we're in the summer now, so it's
hot and humid. It's in the nineties and it's probably
eighty percent humidity out there, so it's not pleasant. So
I tend to do it now early evening. But it's
(16:54):
only like two or three months of the year where
it gets ridiculously hot. So the rest of the time
I'll do my excise mid afternoon. And what I find
there is it's just a nice break. So I'll get
down to doing like focused work in the morning, and
then I'll do some errands, then I'll do my exercise,
and then I'll come back because I work in the evenings,
so I basically what most people do in the evenings,
(17:14):
I do in the afternoon. Yeah. Yeah, so I split
my day and it works well for me, well.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Certainly, I mean with being I mean overseas. I'm sure
from a lot of the people that you're working with,
there's the time zone issue for you, so you kind
of have to use your evening hours because that's work
hours it is.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
So my days will start, I mean, my work days
generally start eight thirty and I'll work up until about
eleven thirty twelve, So I do intermittent fasting as well,
so that will be my kind of first meal of
the day. Then then it's usually as I say, errands,
dog walking, exercise, and then usually I come back and
do my email later in the afternoon, and then after
dinner bit of badmin and then I'm onto doing meetings
(17:59):
and call again. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, it does require a little bit of thought for
how this spends out, but I know a lot of
our listeners are working with people all over the world
these days, and.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, I mean, well that's why the Perfect week calendar
just makes this really simple. Because now I've desired I mean,
when I first started, i'd say, yeah, I can do that.
I can do it two o'clock in the morning. Oh,
I can do four am in the morning. Now I
won't because now I realize no, no, no, I need some
structure in my day, which is how how the Perfect
Week calendar came along. I know that Michael Hyatt actually
(18:29):
calls it ideal Week, and on his website he's got
a wonderful example of his ideal week, and weirdly it's
quite similar to mine actually, so he kind of splits
his day a little bit as well.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yeah, maybe that's what what all I should do. But yeah,
we're trying to figure out what time we could do
this interview. I was like, Carl, I bet you know
you know what is good for people to.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah, people on the so people on the West coast
of the US. I usually find like early morning for me, Well,
I say early morning, like nine am my time works
well because it's usual about I think four or five
pm on the West coast and then East coast. That's
actually much easier because that's only thirteen hours behind. So
eleven pm my time would be ten am New York time.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
So it all works, It all works, all right, Well,
we're going to take one more quick ad break and
I will be back with more from Carl Well. I
am back talking with Carl Poline about productivity strategies. We've
been talking about managing our calendars. So here's a question
(19:35):
for you. You've talked about when people are trying to
change their habits, it helps to picture what they want
their lives to look like. And I know that many
years ago you managed that incredibly difficult thing of quitting
smoking right over the course of a couple of years.
(19:55):
And I'm sure there were logistical challenges, but what was
it about envisioning that you wanted to be running or
exercising still later in life, I was.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Still exercising even though I was a smoker. It was
when I was running marathons and I was a smoker.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
And able to do lots of stuffy I mean, the
way thing was.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
I mean, because it was just to me. I mean,
I think I started smoking probably around about eighteen nineteen,
so I'd already been a competitive athlete. I just went
through I went to boarding school, and then suddenly I
became I was out of school. I don't all my
high school exams, and it's like, oh, there's bars. Oh
there's girls. Oh, there's cigarettes. Yeah, it just all before
(20:35):
I was probably had a sheltered life and suddenly the
world opened up and pizza. That was a bad one
as well, because that just my weight went up, like skyrocketed.
But you know, it comes a point. And I remember
being interviewed on a Korean radio station and I was
supposed to be giving advice to like young university students,
(20:57):
and this student called in to say, I really want
to travel, but I know I have to get a
job and start my career. And I just said, no,
go and travel now. And the host of the show
was a bit surprised because in career it was like no, No,
education is so important, and I'd looking back and I
was thinking, no, I made a lot of stupid mistakes
(21:17):
in my twenties, and I am so glad I did
it then, because the worst time to do it would
be now, because I would when you're in your twenties,
you tend to think you're immortal. You're not, but you
tend to think you are. And there's always a good
chance you can recover your health, you know, I'm sure.
I mean I quit smoking a long time ago now,
(21:38):
and when I have a go and have my annual
medical checkup. You know, there's no lungdy in disease, there's
no defects or anything. But had I quit smoking, say now,
I probably would have done some very long lasting damage
that would be very hard to recover from. So do
all the stupid things in your twenties. That's the advice
(21:58):
I would give to anybody young to because you've got
to find out what you want to do, who you
want to be, and that's the best time to do it.
And I'm also very lucky because Facebook, LinkedIn and all
those but didn't exist when I was in my twenties.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Absolutely, there'll be some photos of all of us from
Oh there will be somewhere.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
But there'll be physical photos, some attic somewhere.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, no, it's true. I mean that's the
time to do the crazy things. And I always feel
somewhat bad for people who are young doing crazy things
because there's you know, you can wind up with photos
following you for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
But one of the things I do tell people is
find five people dead or alive that you most admire
and ask yourself, what is it about them that you admire?
There'll be some characteristic trait about them that you will admire.
And one of my writing hero is Ian Fleming. He
(22:56):
created James Bond stories. And I think the thing that
really I liked, I admired about him is because of
his writing style. But then I discovered that he would
fly off to Jamaica every January. He had a house
in Jamaica and he'd spend six weeks every morning, nine
till twelve writing the next James Bond book. Now that
(23:18):
whole thing just lit up me because I'm going, oh, routine, daily, routine,
three hours writing. I just thought, wow, And it's always resonated.
That kind of thing resonated and people like, you know,
getting to know about Dwayne Johnson and he's some of
his YouTube videos and LinkedIn videos oh sorry, Instagram videos
(23:41):
you know say exercise for him comes first every day,
And I'm going, yeah, I mean, there's no reason why
no anyone could do that, not necessarily have your own
gym follow you around the world like he does. But
maybe every day I go out for twenty minutes walk
every morning or something like that. It's not difficult, but
(24:02):
once it's embedded, you just can't. It's like brushing your
teeth every day. It's just something that you just do. Yeah,
you should see me on an aeroplane a fifteen hour flight.
I'm walking round nowadays, and nowadays I wait for people
to go to sleep because they ever have they'll turn
the lights out. Then I'll start walking.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
I'll start walking. That's good. What on earth is he doing?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
He keeps walking around? I thought, ID better wait until
you go to see.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
And of course, of course, so Carl, I always ask
my guest, what is something you have done recently to
take a day from great to awesome?
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Oh, that's a good question. Tell you what it is is.
Because right now I'm suffering from jet lag. So I'll
wake up at like two o'clock in the morning. Now
I could just toss and turn in bed, hoping one
sleep will come. I've learned it doesn't, or if it does,
it'll come at like seven o'clock in the morning. So
I just get up, come into the home office and
get my work done. Now that time, between two and
(24:59):
six it is four hours, and I get a ton
of work done. And then the rest of the day
when I get hit by you know, the jet like
really hits in, I can just go back to bed,
and I have no guilt because all the important work
has been done. And sometimes I'm actually quite disappointed when
the jet lag wears off. I go back to my
normal hours because now it doesn't feel quite as easy.
(25:22):
But wow, if i'm and I always I mean, I'm
not a great sleeper, but you know, I often think, well,
could I just do that in normal time? If I
wake up at like three and can't get back to sleep,
just get up and get on with the work. At
least I can go back and take a nap. But
that one is if he's had something most recent well,
yeah that was this weekend. I could have spent four
(25:45):
hours tossing and turning in bed, got up, felt rough
all day and got a lot done. Or get up
now while I feel good, get the work done and
then go back to bed.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, absolutely, I love it, So Carl, Where can people
find you?
Speaker 2 (26:01):
A best place find me is at my website, kylepouline
dot com. Although these days apparently you can just type
my name in Google and you'll find me. Apparently, yes, yes,
but I just tend to say you can get to
me on socials and everything through my website. It's all there,
sounds good.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
All right, well, Carl, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
about this or any other episode, you can always reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
(26:47):
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(27:09):
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
(00:24):
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am delighted to welcome Carl Pauline to the show. Carl
is the host of the Your Time, Your Way podcast.
He also teaches productivity courses, among other things. So, Carl,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, So, why didn't you tell our listeners a little
bit about yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Well, I think the most surprising thing is is that
I originally come from the United Kingdom, but have lived
in Korea now South Korea for twenty two twenty two years,
twenty three, twenty three years, yes, twenty three years. This year.
I only came for one year. I just came to
teach English. I needed to time out. I trained to
(01:03):
be a lawyer and then I went to work in
a law office and that was my first experience of
working in an office, and I felt like I was
a prisoner, you know. I had to be there from
nine till well, it's usually eight thirty till six thirty pm.
You were allowed out for lunch, but the rest of
the time there was an office manager. And it was
(01:25):
perfectly normal, by the way, at the end of nineteen nineties,
early two thousands for this to happen. And I really
genuinely felt I'm in day release prison here. So because
my previous jobs had been in hotel management, car sales,
and you know, in those jobs you just run around
all day. You weren't tied to a desk, and so
(01:47):
I thought, Okay, I need some time out because I
do I really want to spend the rest of my
career being tied to a desk. And I came to
career and that's twenty three years ago last month, and yeah,
there's no chance of going back now. I found my
forte if you like I. I fell in love with teaching,
(02:07):
and I knew that within three months that was really
what my vacate vocation was. And I've never stopped since.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, which I love. I love that you, you know,
were able to change in the middle of life and
figure out what you wanted to do. And I'm also
really appreciative that you are talking at me with you
at eleven PM your time, which is during business hours
on the East coast of the United States. Definitely challenging
to connect with that. But you know, you've had such
(02:37):
a varied career, like you said, car sales, hotel, teaching,
English law. I'm sure that you've picked up on little
things from all of these, right, I mean, there's lessons
you've taken from all these as you're teaching now.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Absolutely. I mean I think my first I mean I
fell in love with time management productivity was in middle school.
I used to I used to before computers and Excel
and stuff when I was at school. So it used
to be an a blank piece of a four paper
I'd write out a timetable for studying for when my
exams were coming. And I was absolutely fantastic at making
(03:13):
those timetables, but just terrible at revising. But that was
really where I just became fascinated with time and time management.
I also think I was quite lucky because I was.
I had a teacher at school who got me into
cross country running. Now most people hate that, but I
just maybe it's because I'm probably more introverted. So the
(03:34):
team sports. Yeah, I was okay at but they weren't
really where I excelled. As soon as I started running,
it was wow. I just fell in love with it.
And then I became quite a competitive athlete, running for
my county, which I think in the US would be state,
and that taught me. And again I was given like
(03:55):
training schedules from my coaches, so I at a very
early age I was I learned very quickly that actually
the calendar as we use it today, but the schedule
was always going to be the most important thing in life.
And then when I got working in the car sales,
I was very lucky because when of the first my
first real general manager, I mean, he was probably it
(04:17):
still is to this day, the most organized person I've
ever met. And again this was before we had all
the digital productivity tools we have, So it was this
wonderful a four leather bound desk diary that I just
fell in love with, and I went and bought myself one,
and yeah, it taught me a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Well, it's interesting you say that because that you were
drawn to productivity tools early on. I think you've also
talked about having you can correct me if I'm wrong.
Here at ADHD that as an adult, you know, you
found out and a lot of people who grow up
with that are not necessarily drawn to productivity tools. They
see it as something of a more foreign car I think.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So, yeah, I mean, I'm very lucky because ADHD wasn't
a thing was out school. I'm so glad that I
actually learned coping mechanisms without being told this is the
medicine you should take, because I probably would have believed them.
And so I developed coping mechanisms very very early on
in life, which means that there's no point in me
(05:21):
going to see doctors ABOUTD. I know I've got it.
I mean, you just read my school reports. It's pretty clear.
And yeah, I can get easily distracted. But what I
do notice, though, is that to me, the ADHD is
a superpower because I can I know now how to
engage it in order to get really focused on a project,
(05:44):
for example, that I'm working on, because just before I
went away, I was running close to a deadline for
a course I wanted to get out, and I just
I just thought, right, this is where ADHD is going
to be my best friend. And yeah, for about forty
eight hours I was completely zoned in. Nothing was going
to pull me away from it. And I'm so glad
I've got ADHD. I actually think it's the number of
(06:06):
people have got it. It's probably actually abnormal not to
have it, you know, because so many people have variations
of it. I think in many respects it's probably quite normal.
But as I say, it's to me, it's my superpower.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah. And by learning the coping techniques of planning out
your schedules for long term things, and I'm sure having
the cross country running as a way to burn off
some energy, those are probably a great combination.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
That's why exercise is still a huge. If I'm not exercising,
everything starts falling about I don't. I mean, I'm not
going out running, you know, ten miles a day or
anything like that anymore, but you know, at least thirty
forty minutes a day, I need to be doing some excising.
I'm lucky I have a dog as well, so he
needs an hour Yeah walking, Well, we will.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Get mad in a minute. We're definitely going to talk
about exercise. I wanted to ask you though, I think
I was reading of one of your ideas that you
talk about this time based productivity, And you've talked about
this issue like it's the problem with the modern world.
Like in the past, when you had to do a
great many things, you had to actually go somewhere to
do them right. And so obviously going somewhere takes some
(07:18):
amount of time, Like you can't fool yourself that you
can instantly be at the store or be at this
appointment or whatever else. You had to go there, so
you had to build in the time for it, Whereas
now a lot of the things we do could be
done whenever we have complete flexibility to choose them, and
so people don't necessarily allocate adequate time to them. Am
(07:40):
I understanding that correctly?
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, I mean one of the things this probably came
about about ten years ago when I sort of like
came up with my email processing system, if you like,
and I realized that actually the number of emails I
get per day is probably about one hundred and fifty
something like that. Of that, probably forty require me to
(08:02):
take some action. Now I've got a choice here. I
could just ignore that and let it build up. Well,
tomorrow it'll be eighty, the day after that it'd be
one hundred and twenty. I'm never going to have time
to sit down and deal with one hundred and twenty
actionable emails, no chance. But forty, I calculated, takes me
around about fifty minutes to an hour. I mean, forty
(08:23):
is just I mean some days it will be twenty.
Today it was probably about fifteen because you know it's
Sunday night for me, not I don't get that many.
But so I now allocate it just an hour a day,
and I call it to my communication time. Now, if
I don't clear all those forty emails today, it doesn't
matter because tomorrow the oldest because I reverse the order,
(08:44):
so the oldest is at the top, not the bottom.
So I'm not cherry picking. So tomorrow, I just know
if I start at the top, nobody is ever really
going to be waiting longer than say, twenty four hours
for reply. And it's worked solidly for ten years now,
and it started probably ten years ago. I was probably
only getting about thirty to thirty five emails a day,
so I've had to increase the time I spend doing it.
(09:07):
But I'm quite happy to an hour after that. Nah,
I'm not going to spend more than an hour on communications.
But I know that again, I've got an hour tomorrow
and a day after, so I'm relaxed about it. Never
worries me. There's always some little caveats, you know, if
anyone's got if there's a money issue, or there's a
somebody can't log into their account on my learning center. Sure,
(09:30):
I'm going to deal with that as soon as I
seal that email. But it only takes me like two
minutes to deal with. But the rest of the emails, yeah,
they'll wait until my usually about four o'clock in the
evening afternoon when I sit down and just do my
actionable email. But that taught me. I thought, Okay, if
I can spend an hour on communications, what about allocating
time for other categories of work that I have to do,
(09:52):
whether it's you know, I usually have three hours set
aside for recording YouTube videos. I have probably about six
hours a week set aside for writing. And it's now
so much Mondy Today Monday is brilliant because this morning
obviously my evening time. Now I didn't have to think
about what am I going to do now, it's just oh,
it's Monday's writing day. So this morning I spent think
(10:16):
about two two and a half hours of writing, got
most of my writing done. I'm happy with that.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Excellent. All right, Well, we're going to take a quick
ad break and then i'll be back with more from
Carl Poline. Well, I am back talking with Carl Pouline,
who is the host of the Your Time, Your Way
podcast productivity expert as well. So another exercise that you
(10:44):
have talked about as I was reading the description for
your recent course is the perfect week calendar? What is
the perfect week calendar?
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Right now? This is because most Now, just to go
about a little bit of history, one of I was
introduced to something called the Franklin Planner in the early
nineteen nineties, probably around about ninety three ninety four. Now,
part of that you get sent on a training The
company I was working for sent me on a training
course and the first day I had nothing to do
(11:16):
with time management. I'm going I'm host to be here
to learn about time management. Why are we talking about
governing values? What's important to you? And the lens the
way the lens you look at the world through and
stuff like that. Now, back then, I'm in my early twenties.
It probably went over my head a little bit, but
I did start writing out what I felt at the
time was my governing values. Weirdly, when I look at
(11:38):
them today, I'm going, wow, ninety percent of them are
still true today. And the Perfect Week calendar is essentially
a step up from that. It's like, Okay, this is
all the stuff that's important to me, and if I
don't define that, what does that actually mean at a
task level, It's just going to never get dealt with.
(12:01):
I'm just not going to be dealing with it, because,
as you mentioned before, today's world stuff is just coming
at you twenty four seven. But if you know what's
important to you, you can then quickly filter out the
less important stuff. So the Perfect week calendar is about saying, Okay,
I want this amount of time per week to exercise.
(12:22):
I want this amount of time per week to spend
with my family, because we have family time. So there
was something I read, oh a long time ago now
about Michael Dell when his kids were young and he's
building a big computer empire. He would always be home,
I think by six pm, to have a family dinner
at seven, and then he would play with his kids,
(12:45):
and then at nine pm he'd go to his home
office and deal with any remaining stuff that he had
to deal with. I was thinking, wow, that's three hours
every single day where he has said that's it. It's
now family time blocked off. Nobody gets it's my attention
except my family. I know that Gary Vaynerchuk does it
as well. You know, he's always home for family dinner
(13:08):
time with the kids, and then he will maybe go
out and have a business meeting later in the evening.
And I realize that that means, you know, to me,
family time is also important. So it's in my calendar
because if whatever goes on the calendar gets done. That's
my philosophy. So you can design the perfect week, and
you do it for your personal life first, and then
(13:30):
you do it for your work life. What's important at work?
What's your core work? What are you employed to do?
Make sure that you've got time set aside each week
for that, because if you don't, your calendar will fill
up with meetings. And if you're spending you know, if
you work a typical four hour forty hour week and
thirty five hours are spent in meetings, when are you
(13:52):
going to do your work? So you've got to start
getting When you do that perfect week, you get to
realize just how much time you got. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Absolutely, Well we'll always talk about there one hundred and
sixty eight hours in a week, so you know, if
there are a lot of hours for doing various things,
but you have to know what you're doing with them.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
And another exercise that you also are teaching to people
is a five minute daily planning session. So I saw
that you promised that we could plan for our days
in under five minutes, which sounds exciting to me. So
tell me how I am planning my day in less
than five minutes.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Well, this again comes back to just dealing with reality.
The first place you look at is your calendar, where
are your appointments for the day, because that's going to
tell you how much time you've got to do tasks.
So if you've got seven hours of back to back meetings,
forget tasks, you're not going to do them. You might
be lucky to get to your communications, but you're probably
(14:51):
going to be eating, drinking coffee, or just exhausted. But
if you don't start with your calendar and start with
a to do list, you could easily write eighteen nineteen
tasks or got to do this. We've got to do that,
got to do this, and then you look at your
calendar and go, oh, shoot, I've got six hours of
meetings today as well. Your day is destroyed. So I
have this why call the daily planning sequence, which is
(15:12):
first look at your calendar that will tell you how
much time you've got left for doing to do or
tasks and then build what I call realistic things that
you have to do, and then prioritize that list. Now,
this is stolen completely from the Franklin Planner system. It's
they you know, they say ten to fifteen minutes planning
(15:33):
and solitude. With the digital tools that we have today,
because a lot of tasks and we can set up
to recur and stuff on our calendar can recur, you
can actually reduce that down to easily five minutes now,
and you just get into the habit of doing that
every day. Now. I say to people, do this the
night before, because you'll sleep better, You'll be you won't
(15:57):
wake up us off and go oh I've got to
do this. Oh go that you'll just be more relaxed
in the evening. The other thing is is the next
day you're ready to start. There's none of that. Oh
what do I need to do today, and that just
slows you down. It just bangs straight into it.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah. Absolutely, So do you have any routines that make
you more productive? I know you are a frequent exerciser.
That is something you do, but you do it not
in the morning, which I know a lot of our
listeners in a podcast called Before Breakfast our morning exercisers.
But that's not you.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
No, I've never been a morning I tried it, and
I never It just doesn't seem to work very well
for me. I prefer to excise mid in the afternoon,
and the moment, we're in the summer now, so it's
hot and humid. It's in the nineties and it's probably
eighty percent humidity out there, so it's not pleasant. So
I tend to do it now early evening. But it's
(16:54):
only like two or three months of the year where
it gets ridiculously hot. So the rest of the time
I'll do my excise mid afternoon. And what I find
there is it's just a nice break. So I'll get
down to doing like focused work in the morning, and
then I'll do some errands, then I'll do my exercise,
and then I'll come back because I work in the evenings,
so I basically what most people do in the evenings,
(17:14):
I do in the afternoon. Yeah. Yeah, so I split
my day and it works well for me, well.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Certainly, I mean with being I mean overseas. I'm sure
from a lot of the people that you're working with,
there's the time zone issue for you, so you kind
of have to use your evening hours because that's work
hours it is.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
So my days will start, I mean, my work days
generally start eight thirty and I'll work up until about
eleven thirty twelve, So I do intermittent fasting as well,
so that will be my kind of first meal of
the day. Then then it's usually as I say, errands,
dog walking, exercise, and then usually I come back and
do my email later in the afternoon, and then after
dinner bit of badmin and then I'm onto doing meetings
(17:59):
and call again. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, it does require a little bit of thought for
how this spends out, but I know a lot of
our listeners are working with people all over the world
these days, and.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, I mean, well that's why the Perfect week calendar
just makes this really simple. Because now I've desired I mean,
when I first started, i'd say, yeah, I can do that.
I can do it two o'clock in the morning. Oh,
I can do four am in the morning. Now I
won't because now I realize no, no, no, I need some
structure in my day, which is how how the Perfect
Week calendar came along. I know that Michael Hyatt actually
(18:29):
calls it ideal Week, and on his website he's got
a wonderful example of his ideal week, and weirdly it's
quite similar to mine actually, so he kind of splits
his day a little bit as well.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yeah, maybe that's what what all I should do. But yeah,
we're trying to figure out what time we could do
this interview. I was like, Carl, I bet you know
you know what is good for people to.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah, people on the so people on the West coast
of the US. I usually find like early morning for me, Well,
I say early morning, like nine am my time works
well because it's usual about I think four or five
pm on the West coast and then East coast. That's
actually much easier because that's only thirteen hours behind. So
eleven pm my time would be ten am New York time.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
So it all works, It all works, all right, Well,
we're going to take one more quick ad break and
I will be back with more from Carl Well. I
am back talking with Carl Poline about productivity strategies. We've
been talking about managing our calendars. So here's a question
(19:35):
for you. You've talked about when people are trying to
change their habits, it helps to picture what they want
their lives to look like. And I know that many
years ago you managed that incredibly difficult thing of quitting
smoking right over the course of a couple of years.
(19:55):
And I'm sure there were logistical challenges, but what was
it about envisioning that you wanted to be running or
exercising still later in life, I was.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Still exercising even though I was a smoker. It was
when I was running marathons and I was a smoker.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
And able to do lots of stuffy I mean, the
way thing was.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
I mean, because it was just to me. I mean,
I think I started smoking probably around about eighteen nineteen,
so I'd already been a competitive athlete. I just went
through I went to boarding school, and then suddenly I
became I was out of school. I don't all my
high school exams, and it's like, oh, there's bars. Oh
there's girls. Oh, there's cigarettes. Yeah, it just all before
(20:35):
I was probably had a sheltered life and suddenly the
world opened up and pizza. That was a bad one
as well, because that just my weight went up, like skyrocketed.
But you know, it comes a point. And I remember
being interviewed on a Korean radio station and I was
supposed to be giving advice to like young university students,
(20:57):
and this student called in to say, I really want
to travel, but I know I have to get a
job and start my career. And I just said, no,
go and travel now. And the host of the show
was a bit surprised because in career it was like no, No,
education is so important, and I'd looking back and I
was thinking, no, I made a lot of stupid mistakes
(21:17):
in my twenties, and I am so glad I did
it then, because the worst time to do it would
be now, because I would when you're in your twenties,
you tend to think you're immortal. You're not, but you
tend to think you are. And there's always a good
chance you can recover your health, you know, I'm sure.
I mean I quit smoking a long time ago now,
(21:38):
and when I have a go and have my annual
medical checkup. You know, there's no lungdy in disease, there's
no defects or anything. But had I quit smoking, say now,
I probably would have done some very long lasting damage
that would be very hard to recover from. So do
all the stupid things in your twenties. That's the advice
(21:58):
I would give to anybody young to because you've got
to find out what you want to do, who you
want to be, and that's the best time to do it.
And I'm also very lucky because Facebook, LinkedIn and all
those but didn't exist when I was in my twenties.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Absolutely, there'll be some photos of all of us from
Oh there will be somewhere.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
But there'll be physical photos, some attic somewhere.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, no, it's true. I mean that's the
time to do the crazy things. And I always feel
somewhat bad for people who are young doing crazy things
because there's you know, you can wind up with photos
following you for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
But one of the things I do tell people is
find five people dead or alive that you most admire
and ask yourself, what is it about them that you admire?
There'll be some characteristic trait about them that you will admire.
And one of my writing hero is Ian Fleming. He
(22:56):
created James Bond stories. And I think the thing that
really I liked, I admired about him is because of
his writing style. But then I discovered that he would
fly off to Jamaica every January. He had a house
in Jamaica and he'd spend six weeks every morning, nine
till twelve writing the next James Bond book. Now that
(23:18):
whole thing just lit up me because I'm going, oh, routine, daily, routine,
three hours writing. I just thought, wow, And it's always resonated.
That kind of thing resonated and people like, you know,
getting to know about Dwayne Johnson and he's some of
his YouTube videos and LinkedIn videos oh sorry, Instagram videos
(23:41):
you know say exercise for him comes first every day,
And I'm going, yeah, I mean, there's no reason why
no anyone could do that, not necessarily have your own
gym follow you around the world like he does. But
maybe every day I go out for twenty minutes walk
every morning or something like that. It's not difficult, but
(24:02):
once it's embedded, you just can't. It's like brushing your
teeth every day. It's just something that you just do. Yeah,
you should see me on an aeroplane a fifteen hour flight.
I'm walking round nowadays, and nowadays I wait for people
to go to sleep because they ever have they'll turn
the lights out. Then I'll start walking.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
I'll start walking. That's good. What on earth is he doing?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
He keeps walking around? I thought, ID better wait until
you go to see.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
And of course, of course, so Carl, I always ask
my guest, what is something you have done recently to
take a day from great to awesome?
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Oh, that's a good question. Tell you what it is is.
Because right now I'm suffering from jet lag. So I'll
wake up at like two o'clock in the morning. Now
I could just toss and turn in bed, hoping one
sleep will come. I've learned it doesn't, or if it does,
it'll come at like seven o'clock in the morning. So
I just get up, come into the home office and
get my work done. Now that time, between two and
(24:59):
six it is four hours, and I get a ton
of work done. And then the rest of the day
when I get hit by you know, the jet like
really hits in, I can just go back to bed,
and I have no guilt because all the important work
has been done. And sometimes I'm actually quite disappointed when
the jet lag wears off. I go back to my
normal hours because now it doesn't feel quite as easy.
(25:22):
But wow, if i'm and I always I mean, I'm
not a great sleeper, but you know, I often think, well,
could I just do that in normal time? If I
wake up at like three and can't get back to sleep,
just get up and get on with the work. At
least I can go back and take a nap. But
that one is if he's had something most recent well,
yeah that was this weekend. I could have spent four
(25:45):
hours tossing and turning in bed, got up, felt rough
all day and got a lot done. Or get up
now while I feel good, get the work done and
then go back to bed.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, absolutely, I love it, So Carl, Where can people
find you?
Speaker 2 (26:01):
A best place find me is at my website, kylepouline
dot com. Although these days apparently you can just type
my name in Google and you'll find me. Apparently, yes, yes,
but I just tend to say you can get to
me on socials and everything through my website. It's all there,
sounds good.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
All right, well, Carl, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
about this or any other episode, you can always reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
(26:47):
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(27:09):
listen to your favorite shows.
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