E040: Personal Effectiveness

Music. This is the world of work podcast with James and Hello. This is James and Jane,

and here we are again with another episode of a world of work podcast. What are we talking about today? Jen, so today we are talking about personal effectiveness. Oh, are we going to do it? Well, ooh, ooh. So

yeah, we're talking about personal effectiveness. So the whole series has been about self development and self reflection, yeah, yeah. And lots around personal development. We've actually got an episode. We've got, you know, an episode on everything from happiness and the role it plays and role work plays in that all the way through to we talk about self regulation, yeah, yeah. And this, for me, I pushed quite hard for this. Yeah, you.

Did you like this one?

Well, it's not supposed to like it. I just think I've got a lot out of the subject, and I think a lot of people get a lot out cool. I think we all you only have to look on LinkedIn or Twitter or social media. Everyone's talking about how they are like, you know, do these five things and you'll be like, and a great leader. One simple step, whatever. One this one morning routine changed your life, and it's all nonsense, yeah? Except that it's not, it's all nonsense that there's one thing, yeah, but hyperbole around it, yeah? And the sales and all of that. But the concept of, I don't want to give away one of the definitions, but the concept of make the most is important, yeah, okay, right? And I think that when you and I also, I'm really conscious that we do an episode on mental well being mental health in this series. And when I have struggled with my personal effectiveness, it's usually either been a symptom of or a cause. So when I'm feeling on top of my game from an effectiveness point of view, I really is that also mapping challenges. So for me, that's, like, really important, because this is, there's lots of things we talk about around looking after your mental health, but this is one of them. For me, yeah, if I'm feeling really effective and on it. So does that make sense? That's why, that's why I want to talk about it. So, yeah, but before we do that, how are you? How

am I? I'm pretty good. I've been having a fun time working a bit more on some of the web stuff that we've been doing, and looking at some sort of leadership development programs that we're putting together, which has been fun. That's always a good thing to do. So hopefully there'll be a bit more on that soon, but it's just great fun trying to spend a bit more time constructing at a high level, something that I think brings together a lot of what we do. So it's fun. Beth me, man, what about you?

I'm good. That was very high pitched. Sorry. Listen, I'm good. I am I'm a bit up and down these days, but I think that's just the nature of working alone and for yourself, rather than working in a business. So I find myself having to try and be a little bit more stable about stuff, because I'm conscious that when you're on your own, it's a bit different. Well, you've got to pull yourself up all the time. I mean, the rest of the world isn't really that,

yeah, absolutely. So I just have, I'm just, I try. I'm trying to be a little bit more regular about things I do and how I do, things like routines and some good practice. Well, it's funny, you should mention that, but routines is,

routines is definitely a part of that. So, but I'm good, I'm really good, and how's Ripley. So those of you listeners who are aware or follow our either Instagram or, I think she might have even been on Twitter, I have a dog. That dog was is instrumental in my work life, so she's part of the reason that I went moved away from working full time for an organization. She's mostly asleep or out on play dates when we record, however, sometimes, sometimes she's here and padding around, and you occasionally hear padding in the background. She'd like to be a guest star. She would like to be a guest star, except that mostly she's not interested in what we talk about, sweets and cuddles. She's got a particular soft spot for James. Yes, he gets a special greeting. And she's fine, but I will say that she is. She has been asleep for the last three hours. She had a big walk this morning, and I've got a feeling she might misbehave. Yeah, she might be a little bit I'm really sorry it's

saying some hellos to the microphone. As long as she's not eating it, I think we'll be okay,

yeah, so we'll see how we go. But it's interesting because I guess the reason it's relevant that she's come up is that I've had to change quite significant amount of what i. Doing my personal effectiveness since I got a dog, and that's an absolute choice I made, but it is, you know, it's really interesting how much things change. Yeah, it's a change, isn't it? Yeah, it's no different sort of moving house or moving cities, yeah. So yes, we'll see. Well, I'm looking

forward to learning more about all things personal effectiveness. I know it's something that you are pretty passionate about, and passionate about it, because I'm so bad. Of experience in it. So I guess before we get into that, and before we learn a little bit more, let's check out on how people can get in touch. We've got the website, www, dot, World of work.io. People can check out stuff in there. There's lots of different articles that look at different aspects of what we cover in a podcast, as well as details of a podcast itself and things like that. So that's a useful resource and a way to check out we're up to we've also got all the social media stuff. So we've got a Facebook page. We're on LinkedIn as individuals, and as for World of Work, podcasts, Instagram, you name it, Twitter is probably the best way to get in touch with us. Yeah, certainly it's the way to have the most sort of direct contact, yeah, best sort of interactive way for us. Yeah, I would, I would encourage that. I quite

like a bit. Yeah, it's fun. It's pretty good for us at the WoW podcast. Is where you can get us at the WoW podcast, so we'll be there with that. And I guess last call out before we get into stuff is, if you like what we're doing, it would be great if you could drop us a review, or some stars on iTunes or whatever platform, stars, give us some stars, yeah, anything like that would be useful, just because it's helpful for us, and we do like the feedback as well. So drop us feedback, give us commentary, comments on stuff we're doing that'd be good. All right, so we're going to do the usual approach to stuff. So we're gonna that be the port. Would that be James? Well, should we check the usual walking with one time, I forgot the order, yeah, one time, one time. One time out of like 40,

it might have been, yeah, probably a bit more than one time. So reminder, it's good to know what you're gonna do and visualize it as a way to make sure you do it. So we're going to do definition discussion first, then we're going to do research Roundup, where we get to hear from Jane. Then we're going to do a list of a week that's a key one that I forgot last time. Then we're going to do some tales from a keyboard and some, you know, personal reflections or top tips, before we close up a podcast and get out of here. Should I do some definitions for us. Oh, James, do some definitions. What a treat. I haven't heard one of these.

Okay, so we've got five definitions, but we're going to run through quickly here. There's task management, time management, personal effectiveness, self efficacy, efficacy, not efficacy. Self efficacy, however you want to say it, I struggle with it, self efficacy. And then routines is the next one. We're going to cover the last of the definitions. So I'll do those in order. I'll start with personal effectiveness. Now we got this from a website called habitsforwellbeing.com but there are lots of other places where you can get similar definitions. This definition says that personal effectiveness means making use of all the resources, both personal and professional, you have at your disposal, ie, your talents, strengths, skills, energy and time to enable you to master your life and achieve both work and life goals. So for me, that's a little bit grandiose to some extent. I mean, it's like a little bit, you know, Master Your life is something that's maybe a big, a big ambition in there. But I think, I know, you said it like that. I was before I was thinking, I've got

lights. I like the things it mentions. I'm just not sure about mastering your life. I mean, I think, you know, I'm always wary of things that seem, you know, absolute and sort of perfection into things. I think for me, personal effectiveness is about getting better at this stuff and being more effective and efficient. What do you think?

Well, like I said, I quite liked it, and then you just pointed that out. Now I the bit that's relevant for me is using the resources. Yeah, right. Yeah. So that is, for me, the very epitome of why it's worth spending time and effort working on your personal effectiveness. You have limited resources, time, effort, brain power, money, all those things, and the more clever you are about how you use them, and the more efficient you are at how you use them, the more effective you are, all makes

sense. So that is personal effectiveness. Let's knock off two of those things, but we have unlimited amounts next, actually, or one of them. Let's talk about time management. So time management fits into personal effectiveness. Here, we've got a definition from business dictionary.com and they say that time management is systemic, priority based structuring of time allocation and distribution amongst competing demands. That's very businessy, isn't it? It's quite an efficient definition, but I think we kind of like what's in there. I in there. Time management is about allocating time which is a completely finite resource that we've got very little control over. So that's time management of a similar nature. We've got task management as well, or a similar phrase, I should say, so. Task management is the process of managing a task through its life cycle. So it involves planning, testing, tracking and reporting. So task management is really something that's a bit sort of project management, and that's a definition from Wikipedia, but as a concept that it's worth being aware of, then we've got our last two definitions, which are a little bit different. So we've got routines, and here we're looking at Merriam Webster, and I say that routines are simply a regular course of procedure. And I kind of like that, because it implies sort of regularity, which is important of about routines. But I like the fact that it brings in a procedural aspect as well, because it means that it's not just about, you know, specific things, but it can be that things linked together and they are procedural and interconnected, as opposed to just always, you know, brush my teeth at 705, so I kind of like that, and I like brushing my teeth as well. Anyway. Then the last definition we've got is self efficacy. I've done it again. No, it's perfect. That was perfect. No, I totally got it wrong. Self efficacy. It's a that's how I should do it, with a self efficacy anyway. But for this one, we're going to take a definition from Stanford psychologist, somebody called Albert Bandura, who's written a fair bit on this, and he's defined self efficacy as one's belief and one's ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task. So it's like, you know, how much do you believe in your ability to do something, a specific thing. So that's our sort of definition discussion for this week. Thing. We've put the building blocks out there to build the mighty building of personal effectiveness that we're going to

be building. Where these terminologies are going, these metaphors are coming from the building blocks of mighty Okay, so what did you think of those? You like them overall?

I think they're very, very useful. I like self efficacy because I'm getting better at saying it. I That's not the only reason I like self efficacy. I think I like the procedural aspect of routines and the interconnected amount of stuff. I think time and task management are useful concepts, and it's great to talk about them. I'm kind of, you know, indifferent to the definitions. I guess I kind of feel like, no, that's fair enough. So

I, yeah, I I'm not sure about the routine one, because I feel like the roots, the whole point of routine is to achieve something, and it doesn't really mention that it's like procedure for procedures sake, right? Okay, yes, okay, that's whereas I kind of sit there and think, you know, the routine is there to do something, right? It's to form over your behavior or your activity. But you know, generally, you're right. Task and time management doesn't really matter what they are, as long as they work. I think, I think the bit about making the most of what you have within that personal effectiveness is

important, yeah, all right, so let's just jump on to research. Round up, then do take us through what we're going to cover today.

Yeah. So I think we've got quite a lot to get through, I think. But what we thought would be useful is to talk about what, following on from your definition what personal effectiveness is, what breaks down, what makes it up, and then pick out some elements that have been really effective, certainly for me, around examining. So one will be around time management. Well, in fact, two around time management. One's around a technique called the Pomodoro Technique. The other is about technique called calendar or diary blocking. And then we're going to talk a little bit about task management processes, so things like getting things done. And then two elements that I think are really important within personal effectiveness. One is reviews. So daily, weekly, monthly reviews, whatever you choose, but reviewing where you are in terms of your work and actions and behaviors. And the other is about routines. So morning routines, afternoon routines, and sometimes people are interchangeable. About those, I define them separately, sure, because for me, routines are about specific times, the day a week, whereas reviews are about what you do. Okay,

cool. Like, I'm really looking forward to this, because you're much closer to all of this stuff than I am, and I'm really not all that up to speed with it. So it's kind of exciting. Did

you hear that? Listeners? Did you hear that noise that was James cranking up the pressure?

Oh, yes, sorry. Try again. This is very exciting. Let's see how it goes. Let's, let's just see, shall we? It wasn't meant to be pressured. It was just a genuine interest. Good. Okay, so

we're gonna start with the fact that I couldn't find a model of personal effectiveness I liked, oh, surprise, surprise. Jane doesn't like what she's seeing. However, I did find a few, and I've kind of pulled together two that I like. One is a very simple one that says that personal effect is breaks down into four sections, ownership, execution, discipline and learning, agility. Okay, and I'm not sure I agree with it, but I like that. It brings out different things than I normally see. So ownership being you understanding what you're taking on and what is your responsibility in executing. You kind of follow it execution. Execution is around speed, purpose and how good it is and quality. So execution is, how well are you doing it, how quickly, and is that in line with what you're expecting? Discipline is about. It's about when you. You are executing the things the way you're structuring it. So it's about things like, are you accurately assessing the risks along the along the way of what you're doing and making sure it happens? It's about things like proactive communication. So do so I'm okay. That's one of my biggest weaknesses. So the easiest way to explain it, I am really bad at once a project is going well, keeping up regular communications with all the stakeholders, okay? And personal face the same way, when I'm knee deep in a task, I just get on with it rather than talking to my team. Yeah, okay, so that's one of the places where I am. I'm not using my resources. Go back to the definition, yeah, I'm not using the people around me effectively, and also not trying not trying not to multitask, because it just doesn't work, right? It's not a thing. And then the fourth one I mentioned was learning agility, and this is about your approach to things. So constantly being curious, constantly motivated to find new ways to do things. So you're only effective if you keep thinking about how you can be more effective, right? Yeah, otherwise, you're just stuck in the 1980s Yeah, well, for me, maybe not for you. And then the second one is something that I've pulled together from three or four different models, which is around what makes up personal effectiveness. And so for this purpose of this, I would argue the things that most influence it are time management, task management, goal setting, a higher level relationships. So managing effective relationships, uh, communication skills, and then taking ownership, which is kind of a mixture of the two models. But what we're going to do today in research round up is we're going to focus, like I mentioned on a couple of those. We're going to focus on time management. We're focused on task management and and reviews, because they are the things that I find help people most quickly.

Yeah? And we've done stuff like goal setting. We've done a whole, yeah, well, absolutely. So you

can, you can list a whole episode, and relationships work. Emotional intelligence would be the episode I would start with. And then maybe trust. Yeah, trust, because that's also really, really helpful. So we're going to start with the Pomodoro Technique, because as a time management technique, because I find it infinitely helpful. I still use it, not every day, but I still use it regularly, and I find it really useful to explain to people how to review where they are. So the Pomodoro Technique is something that purportedly came out of the 80s, like many great things, and by a guy called Francesco Cirillo, who's a German Italian programmer. He was back at college. It was in college in the 80s, apparently. And he read a book about chunking work into manageable 25 to 40 minute time blocks to make it easier for your brain to concentrate. The argument being, if you try and concentrate for 50 minutes and you keep going, that's it. You'll just you'll have a big block of time, and then it'll be ages before you can get back. So if you break into small, yeah, exactly. So when you break into smaller chunks, you get a little recharge time in between. You'll go for, in total, much longer, okay? And it also makes your work easier, right? So, so although this is time management, it has a little bit of task management in it. Management in it too. Yeah. And he had a little system. And he had one of those tomato timers that are big in America, twist the tomato and it goes off, which is where the Pomodoro Technique comes from. It's Italian for

Italian for tomato, and obviously Francesco being an Italian, Italian name. And so he had his own little time management paper, and it was dead simple. Like all brilliant systems, you can have an app, you can have a computer system, but at their most simple, you can do them on a pen and paper, and they work. And he had a pen and he had two lists, and basically he developed it into a place where you divide your time into those chunks, you make sure you have recovery time. The traditional, I think, is 25 minutes working and five minutes off. But they tell you to make it your own. And basically what you do is you just, you pick a task, and you do that task for 25 minutes. Okay? And you work out how many pomodoros, which is the 25 minute chunks, sure, it takes you to do a task. And then a number of things happen. One, you get through more work in a day. Two, the human brain is just better at concentrating in small amounts of time. So you get better quality work because you're concentrated on it, and you're not like faffing. But also you start to understand, really, how much thing, how much time things take, right? Okay, so you get a pro. So I can now tell you that doing my accounts, my monthly accounts, takes me three pomodoros, right? Cool, but I wouldn't have told I would have told you it took me 45 minutes, because it's a monthly just update. It's not absolutely not. You're not really and also, I used to do it on Friday afternoons. It would flow. I would finish on a Saturday blah, blah, blah. So the idea is you start to get a really strong way. So there are three biggest lessons. He has a whole book out called the Pomodoro Technique. Loads of people bought it. But basically the lessons are chunk your work up so you don't drown in it. Be really specific. So be specific about the task and specific about the time. Use physical stimulus to develop flow. Own focus. So the timer is important because it's physical, okay, right? So you are setting something and you are focusing on it and putting yourself in that period. And the other phrase they say is commit to each pomodoros, if you're getting married, say more for 25 minutes. Is that what I mean? Well,

I think for those 25 minutes, you have to commit to it as if, like it's you are in design. Okay? So I really like it because I've used it for a number of ways, right? So I've used it for people to get a better understanding of how they spend their time. Is this when you're coaching people? Do you mean yes, or for me, I've used it when I'm really not sure where my time is going. I've used it when I'm really struggling for motivation. I've used it when I'm really struggling to break down a really big task, because I'll break into chapters and then, like, say, I've got to write a massive report, I'll break into chapters and then break them down, and I can mix it up, okay? But I also use it as a way to measure effort versus output, and this is really important to me, okay? So I'm really passionate about measuring by effort, not output. I'm not suggesting Fauci 100 should start measuring by effort. That's not what I'm saying. But for people who are good and intelligent and hard working, if you keep judging them by their output, you will never get them to do Brilliant stuff, because they will always focus on what's going to get them the best output number. So if you know, for example, that someone's really good at writing funding bids, and they know that they've got some solid, safe ones, safe ones. They will always go to those. If you're measured by output, yeah, particularly if they're going to take more than a year, yeah, if you measure them by effort, it's totally different, and it's and people stop worrying about failing because they're proud of how long they spent on it now. And also it flags up when they're spending too long on stuff, yeah. So it's a really good way of developing a language. So I love it. I absolutely love it. What do you think

I like it? I've never used it. Okay? I like the name, I like the story about it, but I've never actually done it. I mean, I'm kind of, I'd like to do it. I just never have done it. I guess the first thing that popped into my head, how about is this? I remember having one of those little timers, and I went, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick is it went around and that would drive me nuts. A silent a silent monitor. I can understand the benefits of it. I hadn't thought about it as a way to assess how long it takes. So I really like that side of it, and I like the idea of a discipline around it. One of the things that I think I'd struggle with a little bit if I try and use it is, if I'm in a state of flow at the end of 25 minutes, I'd find the required discipline to stop working at about time very difficult,

and I so one of the things I don't do is I don't really just use it every day. Now cool. I use it when I've got appropriate tasks or when I'm in a place, certain place in my head. What I love about it is, if I have got. Sometimes I don't feel I'm operating at full capacity, but I don't feel like I know why. So I use it quite a lot to get back up. So I say to myself, I just need to get five really good ponds. It'll help. Yeah, I can understand. I say I'm just gonna get six done today. I'm just gonna get seven, and then you get, you get a far greater satisfaction. Yeah, in my view, yeah. I can see for some for some tasks, I could see it being really helpful.

Yeah, so I quite it's also really good language between, if you work remotely and don't understand what's taking a team type loads of time, you ask them to do the Pomodoro Technique for like, a week. Yeah, monitoring thing really thought about or assessing or whatever.

Yeah. So I really love that. I also really love how well it motivates me. Like I get all I have is I do it by paper. So I use an electronic timer. I do the actual marking by paper, fine, and it's a tally chart. Like on, literally, I just write tasks like, what like on, like on a prison wall, just checking, yeah. So one of those, but I use it on pen and paper, and I really like it cool, and also it helps you track a task if you're a just a bonus, if you're a freelancer, contractor, or if you're paid, time is billed. It works really well for that. Yeah, that's helpful. So that's first one. The second one around time management is something called diary or calendar blocking. Come across that possibly? I mean, I think so. But I'd like to hear it one of those before I commit to it.

Very similar purpose, very different process, and there's two ways of clones blocking I'm going to spend both briefly. One is that you plan your time to within five minutes. So if something takes it up five minutes or longer, it goes in your diary, yeah, everything. So that might be changing after you've been swimming, you break things down to fine, fine, fine detail, yeah, it might be walking from the tube to the office. Normally you would count that within your commute. So you really break it down. But you also block out all your day, everything. So your diary will be a riot of color. And the idea is that you don't, well, there's a number of reasons for doing it. The most important of which, I think, is you don't start promising to do things you haven't got time to do. Yeah, really, perfect, right? So literally, you can show someone your diary and go, when would you like me to do that? Yeah? Because I'm asleep. Then, yeah. And and also it starts having an honest conversation about how much time you're leaving for yourself, how much time you're and also sometimes when you think you're working harder than you are, and actually write it down and go Hang on. What am I doing with that time? Yeah, again, really effective for letting clients know what you're spending your time on, letting your boss and also figuring out where you're wasting time. But also, if you are easily distracted. It's really helpful to know exactly what, yeah, brings you back in. The danger is you can end up with tasks backed up. So where I found it most effective is where I am coaching people to work a five day job in four days, such that, sort of compressed

so they're doing a five day job. I want to coach them to do it in four days, such that fifth day, or actually two half days is one coach. So two half days are free for work that's dumped on them by someone at the last time I'm with you, and then, and then half a day they should be doing development, fun stuff or and the idea is to get a control over their time. And it doesn't always work like that, but it's about getting control over the time. The other way of doing it is as a monitoring, similar to promodoration, which is where you go through a week's process and you literally block your time as it happens. So anything, if you've had time, you then write down if you did a task, you block fine. So that's almost retrospective as you go, or retrospective, yeah, yeah. And the idea is, again, to get a real understanding of what your time is, you can start making choices. So a lot of the conversation I have with middle managers and senior managers is about what percentage of their time are they doing the work they think they think matters the most. Yeah. So I'll say to them, like, how much time are you spending on new projects, developing new projects, and say 30% and I'll be like, how much do you want? You, and let 70 right? So let's work out 70% of four days. Let's work out how you would do that. Let's work out what would need to change, and then let's block it. Let's, let's, let's walk it. Watch what happens if you try, yeah, let's try and create it. And and so I people calendar block like for their lives. I couldn't do that, yeah, yeah. But I do it maybe once every six months. Okay? And how long would you do it for? What would you do? So I

do it for a week, but not Monday to Friday, fine, because I find it really unhelpful, because Monday to Friday I'm like, on my best behavior, whereas Wednesday to Wednesday, I just have to get on with it fine. And I find that really, really useful, and it's quite popular. Lots of people do it manually and make it all pretty. They make it look all glamorous. Yeah, it's not really. That's not really my bag. It works really well if you are a calendar driven person,

yeah. So I've done bits about I haven't done the sort of retrospective. How long did it take using a calendar? I've done similar stuff without using calendars, without blocking out my time. I've done it, but I haven't done it as religiously, but I can see why. There's a lot of benefit to it. One thing that it's not exactly the same as this, but I think is relevant, is when I've worked in teams where I've worked with a lot of people, and maybe I've needed to review stuff and and we're trying to manage sort of more complicated, interconnected deliverables, I've asked people to block time in my calendar for things like review and just to help try and structure my time as somebody in the team as well. Is that the kind of stuff that you've done?

Yes, yes. I think one of the most important things is to understand what helps you in terms of what the format is. So some people are email driven, some people are calendar driven, yeah, so I'm and I don't mean ignore the other but, and some people are personal task list driven. Yeah, I am fundamentally calendar driven, because I'm an ex Event Manager, and everything is about deadlines and feelings. So for me, the easiest way of ensuring I'm doing things is putting it in my diary. Yeah? And therefore, when I have, I don't have, I actually don't have a task list, controversially, which, yeah, well, we'll get on to how just how bad that probably is. But I just, I've come to the conclusion it doesn't work for me. What does work for me is a combination of an appointment every morning with what I haven't done that's due that day, and an email system that works for me, yeah, which I'll explain a bit in America. But so for me, if you are wanting to start somewhere, tracking your time is absolutely your place to start. That's why I wanted to talk about it first, if you don't know where to start, about personal effectiveness, and this stuff is sounding kind of familiar, like you don't really know what you're spending your time on, where you're in meetings, too much, or whatever it is, if you start one of these exercises to see where your time is going, it helps. You've got to understand the

current state before you're thinking about it, right? You just Yeah, so I'm a massive fan of that. So moving on. Then to you might have heard this, so we're going to talk about task management now, and something called Getting Things Done. Have you heard of that? I've heard a phrase, but I've never okay, so it is a manual. It's a manual for stress free productivity. So this is where we drew and we sort of come into sort of what is traditionally known as productivity tools. Yeah, Dave Allen, I don't, I don't think he's a Dave. I think he might be a David. It's very patented, God knows, if I'm allowed to talk about it, but it's also very well used. And it's, it's a, it's a quite a complex system of lists, reminders, and we. Reviews to help you manage your task list, and there's something called a collection basket, and it's all very complicated, but effectively, what he argues is that you need a single place for all of your data to come in. Okay? So you either need to send everything to an inbox or a folder or a physical notebook, but your your email should not be your, like one of many collectors, you should have a place where all your tasks

are coming so it's either your email or your to do list or your Yeah, although it doesn't work

brilliantly with email, like you use email as part of it. But his argument would be, you should be going through your emails, filing them, and in the meantime, writing down in a task. Fine. Yeah, fine. So, but his point is, you need one collector and bucket, right? And that keeps you focused your golden source, and it's not in your head. Yeah, that's the point, right? It's not in your head. You also need a next action list for every project, right? Okay, so you read, write down all your projects, and then you have a next action what's the next thing you need to do? Don't worry about the rest. Like, obviously, it's great if you've got more make sure you've got the next thing, because you'll always move on to it. And then he argues that once a week you have to review everything in the way you structure it, what everything like everything. So

every project list, so what your projects? You review your task list. You review what he calls your contexts. So one of the things that's unique about getting things done is he suggests you group tasks by context, okay? And what that means is, instead of by project, which traditionally you do, you get a project file folder out and you start working on it, he would say, have a task list that has a little list on the phone, a little list under email, a little list on the meeting, a little list under your line manager's name, yeah, and lots of different contexts, and you might have an errand list, for example, or a home list, or a partner list, or a kid list or dog list, or whatever, and the but you also the idea is, where do you have to be to do that task? Fine, okay, so group all your phone tasks together, because if you're in the mood phone calls, you're in the mood for phone calls. And if you've got a quiet room and you're making phone calls, that's ideal, right? Yeah, whereas, if you can't really make phone calls on the train, so there's no point trying to do things, so you want to open up, you know, if you haven't got power and you haven't got a phone, yeah? What are the things you've got? Your shirt, you can't do errands in the office, so don't try. If you're remote working. Have have the office as one of the places. Yeah? And his idea is that you have a list of projects and a list of contexts, and you, you do your tasks by the context, but you track your tasks by your project. Fine. Does that make sense? Yeah. It does have a matrix view, yeah. And so his, he has a process diagram, which you can Google really easily and effectively. It says stuff comes in if it's going to take you more than two minutes, not for right now, it's gonna take less than two minutes do it, yeah? And then, if it's not gonna take you two minutes, either it is goes on your task list because it's a single option, yeah, or it's breakdownable, in which case it becomes a project and the first action goes on, okay? Or you can delegate it, okay, or you can wait for someone so you could nip back to you in an email saying, Oh, you, you've got to send me the attachment, and then it goes into the wait file for the response. And here's the two other files, one or two I can't remember, but that I think he has, the most important, I can't remember if he merges them or separates them, but they're called someday. In reference, someday is probably the most powerful thing I've ever had in my email. So I put it in my email, but he just says, you have a folder someday is all the stuff that comes in that you would like to spend time looking at, but isn't a priority right now, fine. So you go into it on your terms. So my someday folder is my train folder, right? Yeah, when you've got when I know I'm not concentrated enough to do anything else, but I flick through everything that's in. It's all the emails that people say, hey, Jane, have you seen this? What do you think? And it's not part of my work, but I'd like to help if I could. So some days great and references, I'm done with this, but I don't want to lose it, and it goes in a big folder. Now, I don't use everything. He says, I find it overly complex, and I'm bad at sticking to it, but there are elements of it I think are near genius someday being one of them, because the idea is that you should never have an email in your inbox if you know it's either someday reference waiting or going on the task list. Yeah, how easy is that?

So, so we looked at some productivity tools when I was working in it sounds like the thing that we spoke to people about is a bit of an amalgam of these different things. We had the four ds of email management, which is basically pulling some of this stuff together, from what I can tell. So we said that whenever you get an email, you should do one of the four ds. And the four ds that we had were do, delete, delegate or defer, which that's from GTD. Yeah. So it's basically, okay, cool,

absolutely. That's his language from one stage. So when it first comes in, you do it, you delegate it, you delete it, or you defer it to either some some other time, or to, I think waiting goes, okay, cool, yeah, I know it's sound of language. Sound,

yeah, it's really similar, yeah. And so the problem with it is it's really complicated in full. It's genius, if you can get it to work as a whole system. My Word, you have to stick to it fine. And so very quickly, I became of the opinion that I'm just, I'm not on my desk enough to be able to do that in that way, sure, and I'm not. I'm not split enough, but I've taken loads of elements of it. But I would definitely think if you're a systems based person, and if you have never done task management, for this book, there's leaflets. It's worth reading. It's definitely helpful. It's definitely you will learn something from it, even if you choose not to do it exactly in that way. Yeah, that sounds interesting. And the most important thing is you stop trying to remember things, and that's the point of all these systems. We take up a huge amount of our brain power trying to work out what we're remembering or forgetting, because we're not sure where we've put it. Is it on our task list? Is it our email? Has someone emailed me about it? Have I chased that person? The idea of having a system is to know that it's being caught everywhere. Yeah, and you've just got that one, yeah. Source. And the problem with GTD is that it falls down completely if you don't do the review every week, because you have to go through all of those photos and make sure that everything's in the right place and that you've got the right context. And projects but and projects, but that, I would argue that's true for everything. Yeah, I have a system, and I still have to review it. I probably get away with two weeks. But so the way I do it, and it's slightly different, is, although I'm calendar driven, I'm really bad with emails, and I do two things. One is, I read them and don't do anything about them. Okay? So they don't go anywhere. They sit my inbox, and then I just keep rereading them. That's ridiculous waste of time. And the other is that I am not always brilliant at acknowledging what I don't really need to do right now, because I want to think about it. So I have an empty inbox. It's empty as of today. I think I've got four emails that have come since we started recording, but I have, I've simplified the system a little bit, and I have an inbox which should be empty. I then have a this week, not this week, okay? And then I have the same as him underneath. So someday reference waiting. And the idea is, either I do it or I need to do it this week, or I don't need to do this week, and I don't put it in my diary. If it's a task, it doesn't go in my diary unless it's this week, gotcha, because I'm not going to know what I'm doing next week. So I need to decide when I look next week at planning my week, which of those tasks I want to do and what it stops me from doing. And I have a real problem with saying yes to staff. Saying yes to stuff, putting it in my diary, and then something more important comes along two days later, and I've screwed my diary because I've promised someone else I'm doing something, and then suddenly I'm working. And I said this to you, and when you came in this morning, why have I scheduled all this stuff to come off this week, when there's no deadline this week? So for me, I do my review on a Thursday, personally, because I'm really bad at finishing early on a Friday if I feel like it, so then I haven't done my reviews, it's the first thing that goes Sure, so I do on a Thursday, or occasionally first thing Friday morning, but usually on a Thursday, and I look at my following week, I plan my travel, and then I go through my folders, and I go through my this week folder. Have I finished everything if I haven't what needs to be done on Friday and what needs to be deferred to be deferred to next week? Yeah, I go through my Not this week folder, move it into my this week folder, or it stays in not this week because also it doesn't need to be done next week. Yeah? And it's, it's the simplest way that I have found to control my task list that's manageable, yeah, because then I can see this week and I know what's realistic. And I have to have an honest conversation. When I put my I literally, I look at it and I go, hang on, yeah, it's not happening this week. Let's not pretend it's happening this week. And the question to me, always in a task is, do I do it now? Do I do it this week, or is it not this week? Yeah, not is it next week? Not the week off. It's just, is it not this week? Yeah. So that's my top tip of a sort of messing around with GTD. But I really love GTD. I can't use it in its fullest because I'm just, I don't have that kind of systems approach, but I it probably is the one thing that most changed my attitude about task management. Yeah, that's good. So I would encourage you to have a look at that one. Yeah, sounds like there's lots of really good stuff in there. Yeah, I think, I think he makes those really good points. Actually, he's just sometimes it's a bit complicated. Yeah, you

know a lot of it. I did a lot of project management, a lot of my background has been sort of program delivery type work, and there's a lot of crossover between what's in here or what I've heard you describe in things like, you know, project management, office function, and the way you run it, and your weekly reviews and your status reports and your actions and all that kind of stuff. So

the listeners who listen to the episode we did on hurdles, yeah, huddles, right. Do you remember that I had a bit of a moment in huddles where I went, Oh, they're terrible. And then I went, Oh, no, we do them and they work. So one of the things that I find really interesting is project management, event management and task management tend to all come from the same brain type thing. So if you know one, it's very easy to do to another. If it's all new to you, it can be quite hard. So to move on from that, I think it would be useful to look at two elements that can make it easier for people. One is reviews, and the other is routine. So we've talked about reviews a little bit already, because they crop up in David Allen's getting things done. On and reviews and routines are when they're done effectively, probably the they're like, the, I don't know, golden bullets of task management, Batman and Robin. Yeah, maybe, yeah.

Maybe so reviews can take place on a daily, weekly, monthly, fortnightly, yearly, you know, there's no, there's no rules within getting things done There weekly and within and then he also suggests occasionally doing a check in, I think quarterly, around what type of work you're doing and whether it's still relevant, etc. I do mind fortnightly, sometimes, occasionally I do them weekly, but most led to them for nightly, because I don't trust myself to do them weekly. Trust myself to do them weekly, and so fortnightly, anything longer than fortnight, feels a bit like I've left it too long. But I also do a daily review, which takes about five minutes, sure, and I'm that fits into my routine, so I'm going to explain it a bit. But do you do weekly reviews?

Well, you know, every minute I'm doing it less when I used to, but I think I pretty much do. I mean, like for me, I tend to structure stuff when I'm looking at this around an information center. So I tend to either on, well, when I was employed, on Friday afternoons, I'd have time blocked out to review my week. So I'd give myself 60 to 90 minutes at the end of each Friday to check in on where I am, and then I'd use that to update an information center, which is basically a way to capture a certain amount of information. And I tend to work with a task list for myself, which kind of is in the form of a project plan, as a way I'd run it myself, but I would basically do that check in on a Friday afternoon, and I do it weekly, or at least I'd have it in my calendar. So it was

interesting. You said you did it 60 to 90 minutes. I was going to ask you, how long is yours? Because they without question, they always end up longer than I want them to be, and the more longer they are, the less likely you are to do them, which is kind of that eternal challenge. So in short, what is a review? It is about choosing a particular period of time, and it might be the day, the week, the month, whatever, and it's about good ones for me involve looking back, checking that everything that was meant to be done has been done. If it hasn't, then what needs to be shifted onto your future week or your future months? Let's, let's talk weekly for the sake of this. So it's about looking back. Um, I like to use it for a period of self reflection as well. What's gone well, what hasn't gone well? What should I have done differently? It has if you're using something like the Pomodoro technique or a time management system, it's a really good way of totting up the end of the week. Sure, I've spent 15 pomodoros on admin, and I really don't want to be doing that, or I'm really pleased I've only spent three, and it's been really successful. So it's a really good time for that. And then within the context of looking forward, it's about, for me, it's about looking in my Not this week folder, yeah? For David, David Allen, it would be about reviewing your projects, making sure you've got a next action on each of them, so that you know what that next step is. It would be about checking your context. Are they all still relevant? You know, if you've got one for your line managers, it's still the same person. Yeah? The same person. And it's about, I also use it as a period for travel, so looking back and forward of my travel, making sure I've done my expensive or at least I know when I'm going to do them, and then looking forward and working out and planning where I'm going to be in the country. And it's about dedicated period of time when no one talks to you ideally, and you literally go through the logistics of your work life for that previous week and that forward week. The reason I do it instantly for fortnightly is because of travel planning is so expensive if you only do a week in advance, yeah. So if I've done it for you, I tend to feel better about it. And a good review is reflective, so you spend time thinking not just about the process, but whether you know, what are you doing within it. It's reflective, it's a it's robust. So it can handle a few knocks. It can handle you doing in 20 minutes one day because you're really struggling. Yeah, you can handle when you realize you've got a totally different type of work for next three months. And months, and it's regular. It has to be regular. And that's the other reason I do it for nightly, because I can guarantee I'll do it fortnightly. I can't guarantee it fortnightly, and occasionally do an extra one than do it weekly. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. It makes sense. It's such good practice, right? I mean, yeah, so often we put off putting time into managing how we're doing things, because it doesn't feel like it's real work. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, it feels like that's not for real work. I should be doing for real work. But actually it's just as important. And I think giving yourself permission and allocating time and making sure that you understand that this stuff is part of work and part of helping you do your best, then it's been, it's effective, yeah. And I

think, I think if you're working a team, particularly, it's a really good way to be more hands off in management, because you can say to people, just, just share with me what's what your review look like this? Yeah, rather than going through the detail and similarly, if people are new to it allows them to gain some control over the work and share. And if you're going to integrate. Your team into a task management, online management system or a CRM system that's going to track their tasks, then they're already halfway there, which is exceptionally helpful. So, yeah, I'm really super passionate about reviews. I do different things depending on different so at the end of the day, I don't do a review anymore, because I do it with you in the huddle in the huddle in the morning, where we look at what's gone well and what's gone bad before. And then for the week, I do, as I say, a fortnightly full task exercise. And then I would say, I'd love to say, it's every three months, like every call. It's not, it's when I feel like it on a Sunday afternoon, usually. And if I've been up a big walk and I've got the laptop out, and I might do my finances, and then I'll be like, Oh, I might just go and have a

look at where I love doing that sort of quarterly look ahead. You know that 12 week rolling, yeah. And

I just, I, what I do is I have a really high level Trello board, which is a task board with my travel for the year, okay? And it just gives me a sense of roughly when I've got dates in, because then I can start building my calendar. So if I'm in London, and I know I'm in London October, so I'm gonna book an extra day down, yeah, so no plan around it, yeah.

And so that quarterly look gives me a sense. It's also when I can tell my partner when I know, because I'm like, right? I know where I'm gonna be the next three months, roughly. And this is what it looks like, and this is when you gotta have

the dog. And for me, doing that forward look helps me think it a bit more of a strategic level, like you alluded to earlier, are the things I'm doing still aligned with where I want to be with the right type of work for me, all that kind of stuff comes in at that higher level view for me, at least

Exactly. So I strongly advise you to read a bit more about reviews if you're listening, particularly if you struggle with managing your own time. And so for the first year I did it. I made myself a rule, if I did 20 reviews a year, I'd won. That was it. They could go rubbish. They could be five minutes. They could be like there was, of course, they weren't, because that's not what happens. But for me, the way I set my goal was, I need to do 20. Yeah. So what happened, of course, me being me, is I stuck to them religiously for the first six months. Yeah, weekly. But at least I felt like you've learned it. Yeah. So,

yeah, really important. And I don't know any task management systems that don't have some form of review. So it's really worth getting used to it. The most successful I've ever been is when I've had my own notebook just for my reviews. Okay, nothing goes in there except my reviews. And so that's a really good way of noting where I am, what I've changed. Because I went through a period of changing my context loads when I was doing, getting things done, and I kept changing back and forward. And then I start keeping a diary about what I was changing in my review. And then it stopped, okay. And then the last, the last sort of not element nugget, you were about

awful phrase, awful phrase routine. Yeah, okay. Is routines? Okay? So this, if you go on social media, everyone's obsessed with what their morning routine is, and they're eating.

Well, I was up at 1237 this morning for 16 minutes of eating walnuts followed by an olive oil bath and a nice shower, all

of that, all of that. And also, I mean, a review is a routine, right that we've just talked about. But I want to, I want to call out, particularly morning and evening routines for two reasons. And you can feel free to shoot me, okay, so or not, or agree with me, I'm gonna call out evening routines first, because it's the one I'm fail at consistently. Okay? And call out sleep hygiene. Oh, great. So I talk about this a lot with people who find themselves surfing on social media when they go to bed, reading a book, watching telly, and therefore they don't I say, What time do you go to bed? And they're like, oh, it depends. You know, fall asleep about this time when I'm watching telly and then whatever. And forget whether you're successful at work. Sleep hygiene is important, right? Totally darkness when you go to sleep. And this is someone who fell asleep on the sofa last night. Darkness when you go to sleep is important. It's good for you. It's what recharges your body. So trying to go to bed at a similar time, not saying don't ever go out, but try and go to bed at a similar time. Most most nights, turn the lights off. Be deliberate. Like everything else we talk about, be deliberate about going to bed. This is when I'm going to bed, and this is when I'm going to sleep. If you have a partner that goes to bed earlier and you use as an excuse to go to bed,

great. Really helpful. Earlier you go to bed, the better life is, yeah, what I've decided, yeah. I

mean, we're old, admittedly, I understand this. I'm saying. And if you're not old and you're still out partying, that's fine, but still, you can have good sleep hygiene, right? Yeah, and be deliberate about it. And if you do like a drink, or if you do like to, you know, stay out late and get tired, the more their routines, the less likely you have to think about it when you come in, yeah? And so I'm rude by routines. I mean, turn the light off, have comfortable sleepwear. People don't talk about that enough proper, dedicated, comfortable sleepwear. Do not sleep in a T shirt and whatever's left over, right? That's not good for you. Have comfortable sleepwear. Get into bed. Have a glass of water by your bed. Turn your phones off, put them. If you can't turn them off because they've got the alarm, buy an alarm clock. You're not that broke. If you've got an iPhone, yeah, or whatever else it is. But if you really can't just put it somewhere else, plug it in, because there's nothing worse than waking up past your alarm. If you want to plug your phone in, turn it off. Yeah, that's happened twice. I used to have a lot more so. And the most important thing is, right? Don't do any of the things I tell you. Try them and figure out what does your routine, a really good sleep routine is about, I would argue, seven to 10 minutes long, right? It takes about half an hour to talk. So I'm not talking about the time you can build to that. I'm not talking about the time from, you know, you decide. So I am just talking about the five, five minutes, seven minutes, when you're brushing your teeth, getting ready for bed, but be deliberate about it, because all too many people in this world are falling asleep in front of the telly and then waking up half an hour later, and then wandering through to the bathroom and then kind of half brushing their teeth because they're really awake, and then crawling into bed with their T shirt on, they just are. I just know it, because I don't think I'm the only one that had this problem. So my evening routine is just focus on sleep hygiene. That's all that matters. Yeah, it's good. Focus on making sure the lights off. There's no light coming in. Focus on the fact you're in bed because you want to be at a time you want to be, and when you wake up in the morning, what time do I go to bed? I don't know. It's not an answer, yeah. Do you have an evening routine? Do I have

an evening routine? I think I do. I'm kind of maybe less intentionally structured than I should be about it, but I basically do. I mean, I know I like to go to bed early. I do like to watch some things with my girlfriend before we go to sleep, sometimes in bed, sometimes not. But I will, you know, do the tooth thing, get I'll actually floss my teeth first, because I've been learning about, yay,

my dad's dentist. Yay, yay, get toothpicks too. Yeah, I've got, yeah, dental hygiene people, yeah,

I know. I mean, teeth are expensive. I'm in a quandary, because I use these little plastic things, but I know that they're environmentally really bad. Well, I've got, like, a thing that's like a floss and a pick all at the same time, which is nice, but environmentally, anyway, always end up talking about your teeth. I don't know what it is anyway, that's unhelpful, but I floss my teeth. I'll brush my teeth, I'll get changed and ready for bed, and I'll get into bed. Sometimes I walk to my bed. Sometimes I won't, but I do tend, actually to listen to some stuff when I'm going to sleep as well. So everyone's got different approaches, but I do turn it off then I have a timer. Okay, so that's loud, yeah, so I've got a timer. No, that's loud on my device, but I'll turn it off after Okay, that's really that's allowed, and I'll do that. And I tend to depending on how things are, if I'm a little bit more awake, I'll listen to something a bit new. But if I know I'm a bit tired, I'll listen to something that I've heard a few times but I like, and that just kind of helps me go. I also though I don't really do it now. I like having a sort of white noise, yeah, to help me sleep. So I've, in the past, and you can, you can get apps, yeah, you get apps. Or in the past, I've used a fan, stuff like that. I think things like having a window open is great as well, in terms of managing the air. So all that stuff fits into broadly what my so you can read about a

million of them on the internet. We're not suggesting you copy any of them. The point is, be deliberate, right? I think it's just like everything else we talk about, be a bit deliberate about it. And then morning routine. This one is not, I'm not going to even dare to comment about morning routines, okay? In terms of what's effective, I'm just gonna give a very personal and you, if you're really good at getting up in the morning, right? Seriously, you don't need to listen to this bit, because I am, I am, like a grade 101, while you're already ahead of me. But some very proud if you're really bad in the morning, firstly, you will always be bad until you get your sleep hygiene at night done. At night done. So true, so true. But even if you do, you will struggle. So my suggestions are, number one, get a dog. I can't I can't stay in bed because she just looks at me like I'm evil, and then decides to whinge. And she don't whinge much, but she winches when I don't get out of bed. So number one, try and get dog. If you can't get a dog, when you go traveling next east, so backwards in time, right? Not backwards in time, obviously, but the clocks are going back. So, so when you go, if you go east, when you're moving, really bad, really bad at my east and west, yep. So when, if you go, so the So, for example, if you're in the UK when you go to America, yeah, right, be prepared before you go on holiday or travel to make the change when you come back. Yeah, okay. Because, without question, that is a brilliant time to make the change, because I've done it and it worked. Okay, I got it to stick because I'd gone somewhere, I'd gone to Cuba, which is, I don't know, I think it's like two or three hours difference only, but it's enough that when I came back, I had got used to getting up at the time that I would normally get. And so when I came back, 630 didn't feel that bad. And I swear it worked. It was amazing. Yeah. That was really, really good. And what I would say is that whatever you can do to get your body out of bed, it doesn't matter, just get it out of bed and don't get back in. That's like, I know this sounds really basic, but get out and don't get back in, right? Because, because, if you can do that breakthrough, I think it's about three minutes I've worked out, I think for me, and I've spoken to COVID about this, it's about three minutes that it takes me to not then want to get back into bed. So having as long as I'm out for three minutes, and also, if it's winter, don't have a shower in the morning. That's another massive thing. Have shower at night because it's cold and you want to get back in, you want to go and dry, or you want to go and sit somewhere, and you just don't do what you're meant to do. Does? Does that these. So these are really simple, stupid things, right? But I cannot tell you how hard I found it to change that. It was the thing that nearly really struggled. And then the other thing I did for a while, I did lots of things to fix it, was I made, I gave myself a reward in the morning of a bar. Okay, so I love Pilates. It's really expensive. For about two months, 15 years ago, I had a personal Pilates lesson. Oh, wow, right, wow. You can't not show up when there's just one person. I know someone else who does tennis at this morning, and they don't do it, they like it sounds really right? It's so funny. It's, oh my god, he has a tennis lesson twice a week at 6am That sounds so glamorous. Yeah, no, it's because he's scared he won't get out of bed, which I love. I just love that. He was like, There's no way I'm going out of bed and and you can't let someone down, right? It's different. If you're a group, you can, can't let one person down, especially if you need to pay them yes. So all of those things help because, and it is doable, you can change it and it, I promise you, you can change it. So that's just a shout out for the people in the morning. Yeah, that's kind of cool. Do you have a morning routine? Morning Routine? I get up and I get out of bed. Do you make the bed? Yeah, always make a bed. So I'm new to making the bed, yeah? So I only picked this up the last few years. No. So make the beds amazing. Yeah, it means it's really hard to go back. But also,

you walk past your bedroom and you like, look at my bedroom. It's nice giving up all my secrets here, yeah, but I don't make the bed. I'm pretty

good in the mornings, right? I mean, like, generally, going back to sleep isn't something that I normally face as a challenge. In fact, sometimes I want to go back to sleep and can't do it. It's more of a challenge I get. But generally, I'm pretty happy about it cool is that our research roundup end,

so that, for me, is probably quite a long, sorry, research runs, and it's absolutely there's like, a billion things we could have put in that, of course, yeah, but we just thought it'd be really useful. Some of the really practical things that will those routines, those reviews, and then this task and time management that I think is really helpful. Yeah, cool. So I do a very quick list of the week for people. Yeah, I think we've snuck in a bit of research

in there. I think we might have done a little bit as well. So what we've got is a list of a week for you, which is kind of researching, and it's, it's a list of seven principles of personal effectiveness, and hopefully it's something that you find a bit useful. Again, it's just kind of like basic, you know, basic things to think about, but hopefully it's a bit helpful for you. And what you. And what's fun is it addresses the problem, and you can remember it by address. So A, D, D, R, E, S, S is the first letters. Are the first letters of what we're looking at here. So to be more personally effective, you should follow these seven principles. And the first one says, accept responsibility. Now you talked about this a little bit earlier, and when you talked about things like ownership and that that fits in there, but you need to have ownership and to accept your responsibility for all the things that you're trying to manage, including your personal effectiveness. The first D then is define success. You need to start with end in mind, you need to know where you're going and and what I guess, good looks like, so that you can understand if you're being effective in reaching it. The next D is to develop a system you trust. So we talked about getting things done earlier, and lots of different processes and systems that people can use, and you know, you can adopt one that somebody else uses, or you can create a system of your own based on influence from others. But what you want to do to be effective is to have a process or a system that works for you. It's really important that you have some sort of system, because otherwise it's really hard to do this stuff. The R is recruit your stakeholders. Now what this is about, I believe it's about trying to make sure that you know you are working with people that fit within your framework, and that you've had conversations with about the way that your framework works, and you're all on the same side. So, you know, within the world of work, there are a whole number of stakeholders that you work with, and it's about trying to work in an environment that fits with what you're looking to do, with people who kind of fit within what you're trying to do as much as possible as well. I. The E from addresses, embed your routines and rituals. And this is similar to what we talked about with morning routines and evening routines and even things like the review you can think of as a ritual. Trying to think about all these practices and ways of working and get them all embedded into your world. It can take a little while to embed these things, but if you get them embedded, and it'll help your personal effectiveness, because you won't even think about them. You're just about them. You'll just have adopted these things as best practice and as the way that you do things. Next up, we've got the two s's. So first is to steer meetings and interactions, and this is about trying to make sure that you actually are efficient in the meetings and the interactions that you have, and trying to to usher them towards productivity and productive outcomes. All too often, it's easy to go into an interaction or a meeting and find that you're not being productive, but if you, if you really try and focus towards productivity in those environments and those coming together so people, then you'll be more personally effective overall. And then the last one is to stay on track under pressure. Now that sounds kind of simple, but there are tools and things that you can do that will help you do that. We've talked about some of the tools elsewhere, but I guess just acknowledging that pressure comes up and makes things harder and and you know, under pressure, you'll strain and you'll bend out of shape a little bit, but trying to make sure that you're as focused and as effective as you can be under pressure, and that you're staying on track is helpful. So that's the address seven principles of personal effectiveness. Which, which one of those is your favorite? Have you got a favorite? Or do you like a

favorite I have? I think,

I think the systems piece is really important. Develop a system you trust there when everything else falls

apart. Yeah, you can trust. You can trust the process. Sometimes Can't you cool. So any stories from a keyboard for you

probably just one really straightforward I've probably shared enough this episode about my challenges. One story from keyboard for me, would be the way that, particularly on major events and big projects that are coming to the end the use of a task list that is effectively has a timeline for the day running down the side in 10 minute increments, and then has a context based task list. Okay, is amazing when you run a massive team. So I used to run a team of about 500 people on site. I had four key, five key members of staff, and they ran teams of huge numbers, sure. And so I had their names across the top. I had health and safety, legal, major complaints and something else, hospitality and sponsors. And so at the beginning of the day, I would start at 6am and my day would be filled, and I would say, I'll come and see you at 10. Yeah, 20 past 10. And I would when you're a very not when you're not working at a desk, you're trying to find people in a big space, particularly if you're working on a big project or a site. It's absolutely amazing. Yeah. And then you save things for people until you see them as you see them walking past you. You say, hey, hey, Dave. Come here, Dave. Dave, Dave, can I just run you through the four things that I've got to talk to you about? And he says, Oh, I've got three for you. And it's amazing. So when you're working in really big teams, in busy spaces or noisy spaces, it's really, really good, cool.

I guess my thought on this is around trying to get consistency within a team. So I've done a lot of work coaching teams through adopting new ways of working and new practices within them. And one of the things I've seen when I've rolled out things for teams is that individuals and teams have different ways of working. And if you speak to people in a team, everyone will think that they're doing something, and they'll all be doing it in a different way, and it's all kind of okay, but if you can get people doing things the same way, then it's just hugely more effective. So some form of consistency and sharing, even of knowledge around how everybody else is working is a really powerful thing. So, you know, I like doing stuff like that through information centers, but things like shared to do lists, or consistent project status reporting, or whatever it happens to be can really help bring people together. So I guess my my sort of tell from a keyboard is around the power of consistency and approach within teams. It's sometimes hard to do that because you want a bit of individuality as well. But you know, trying to get some consistency is really helpful. Any any top tips from you don't get stuck with

a system. Don't get stuck because you've invested two years and it has worked for you. Don't assess that. That's your system, yeah? Like a way of working change, yeah. So if you've got a task basis, words, any a way of working, or a way you run your team meetings, it doesn't matter what it is. Things change all the time. And if you and it may have worked with you, I've got things that work for me for 10 years, yeah, but then I went to self employed, and they just fell away. They didn't all work in any way, shape or form, because they don't. That's not how I work anymore, so just be really open to that, and don't get too hung on to things. Yeah, okay, cool.

I guess my top tip is to speak to other people about what they do, particularly if you're in a workplace or, you know, if you've got a way of doing something, speak to the others in your team and say, do they have a way of working? Do they want to do things the same way? Do they do it the same way? What can you learn from others? And I like your idea. Or your your top tip about being willing to evolve and change things every time. I think that's helpful as well. All right. Well, I guess that's a bit light on top tips, but we've had lots of tips throughout the whole episode, so I think that's pretty good. Let's just kind of wrap things up and say that if people would like to get in touch, they can do that. They can look at the website, www, dot, World of work.io, and they can check us out on other social media places. And what's the best one on social media, without question, Twitter, Twitter, and

it's not the best one. I mean, they're all great. Obviously, we're not saying that, but we're saying we tend to be honest. Yeah, the best one to get in touch with us? Yeah, absolutely. Although we are on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, yeah. So you can get us at the WoW podcast on Twitter, and we'll reply to you, and you can always give us feedback and comment on that. And

genuinely, I have probably tried every every trick in the book. Some of them work for me. Some don't. I haven't left them out because they're not brilliant. If you've got favorites, let us know on this, I think, yeah, see what people are doing. Cool.

All right, well, until next time it's over and out from the effectiveness of personalness. Guru people, kind of no gurus here, but I hope it helps any little bit this has helped us. Yeah, I'm sure that's helpful. Stephanie, goodbye from me. Goodbye