EXCERPT FROM THE INTRODUCTION

My time management and productivity obsession began nearly thirty years ago. I vividly remember painstakingly drawing out exam revision timetables with a pencil and ruler when my middle and high school exams approached. I would use different colored pens for each subject and create beautiful timetables with built-in break periods and days off.

I loved it! I was great at creating the timetable; just terrible at doing revision and exams.

My love of productivity and time management comes from competitive athletics. As a teenager, I was encouraged to run by an inspiring teacher, Mr. Farrow. He encouraged me to take up cross-country running, and this was the first time I found myself good at anything. I was not a model pupil and languished in the bottom sets in all the key subjects: mathematics, English, and science. But when I took up cross-country running, I found myself at the head of the pack. It seemed I was a natural!

My coaches gave me training programs, and all I had to do was to follow the schedule. Those schedules taught me how to manage my time. I went to school, and then after school, I ran. Sometimes at the running club, other times on my own. Then I came home and did my homework. I quickly learned that the key to success at running (and academic studies) was consistently following a plan and applying a little persistence.

The training schedules and the routines I learned about as a teenage athlete became revision timetables and schedules in my schoolwork. This, resulted in my grades rising. I never quite made it to the “A” sets, but I no longer languished in the bottom “D” sets.

All the pieces were falling into place. I was learning about structure, routine, persistence, and, most importantly, knowing what I wanted.

Not long after joining the workforce when I began my first day as a new car sales executive, I was introduced to my sales manager, David Cox. As I was ushered into David’s office, I noticed an open A5 desk diary in the center of his desk that showed an entire week across two pages. To complement this diary, a pile of papers was neatly fanned out in perfect alignment on the right-hand side of David’s desk.

It struck me that this was an organized person. Yet, I had no evidence of this except for how clean and organized David’s desk was. Everything seemed organized around his A5 diary; it was the centerpiece of his desk.

Thirty years later, I spoke with David about this, and he mentioned that his diary is still his number one organization tool. He now uses a digital calendar, but the way he uses it is the same way he used that A5 desk diary all those years ago.

If you think about it and want to know where you need to be, when, and with whom, your calendar is the perfect tool.

You may have heard of something called the Bullet Journal. The Bullet Journal is a paper-based system where you take a plain notebook and design your own way of managing your tasks and appointments. The centerpiece of the journal is – you guessed it – your diary, which you draw out yourself. You can create boxes, lines, or any way to show your daily appointments and commitments. If you are artistic and want to practice your artistic skills, the Bullet Journal is a beautiful way to do it!

David’s boss, our general manager, was Andrew Donovan. When I was introduced to Andrew, in his office was… wait for it… a gorgeous A4 black leather diary taking center stage on his desk and a perfectly lined set of papers on the right-hand side. Andrew also had an expensive-looking blue Waterman ball pen neatly placed on the open desk diary. (He was the big boss, after all).

It was an almost perfect copy of what I had seen on David’s desk earlier, save for being larger and a little more expensive in appearance.

What was it about these two gentlemen that gave the impression they were organized and on top of their work? Part of what led me to believe that was the cleanliness of their desks. It was a first impression, but seeing their open diaries with their appointments neatly written in gave me a sense of focused organization.

While you may not use a paper-based planner today, the principles used back then are the same principles today. If you want to be on top of your work and know how much time you have, you’d better ensure your stuff is organized.

Over the months, the more I learned about Andrew’s working style, the more inspired I became. Andrew was the most organized person I had met. Whenever Andrew held a management meeting, he would carry a spiral reporter’s notebook; when he asked someone to do something, he would write it down in that notebook. You knew Andrew would never forget to follow up with you, and his management team always succeeded in getting things done.

The experience of working with Andrew and David set me on a course of having a well-organized diary. Andrew’s impeccable yet simple time management system inspired others. It inspired David, and it certainly inspired me.

I remember discovering where Andrew bought his desk diary and traveling over the Pennines in the north of England (around a two-hour drive) to purchase one. Looking back today, I see it was one of the best purchases I ever made because it began my journey of using tools to manage my life.

Before buying that diary, I, like most people, tried to remember everything in my head. It’s the worst time management system ever invented! As David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, says, “Your head is a crappy office.” You may have noticed that your brain does not understand time; it only knows something has to be done and will remind you about it at the worst possible time. For example, I’m sure you’ve been reminded to turn off a light or lock your back door when in your car halfway between work and home. It never reminds you as you leave your home.

I’ve gone through all sorts of different time management and organization systems, from my first Filofax in the late eighties to the Franklin Planner in the early nineties and finally going all in on digital planning when I got my first iPhone in 2009.

The basic principles of time management haven’t changed. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers, kept a simple diary/journal listing how he would organize his day. There was time for dining, resting, reading/self-education, sleeping, and work. Throughout history, the most creative and productive people have succeeded because they took control of their time. They knew what they wanted and carved out time each day to create. It didn’t happen by accident.

Over the last twenty years, there appears to have been a shift away from this wisdom of first establishing what is important to you and building your days and weeks on that foundation. Today, it’s all about managing projects, tasks, and appointments. What we value and want to spend time on has sunk to the bottom of the task-list pit.

What teachers like Hyrum Smith, Stephen Covey, Jim Rohn, and Earl Nightingale taught us has mostly been replaced by app developers who want to sell you the latest, shiniest tool to get you hooked on organizing and moving stuff around.

Instead of establishing your governing values and the principles of first-things-first (i.e. you, your family, your dreams, your aspirations), you are seduced into tools that stop you from thinking about what you want and instead focus you on task completion. That doesn’t get meaningful work done! That causes the very thing you are trying to avoid – overwhelm, stress, anxiety, and, ultimately, breakdown.

I began to think, what kind of time management system would work in a world with ever-increasing input from email and message services such as What’s App, Teams, and Slack, where deadlines were no longer months but often weeks or days away? There had to be a better way!

This led to the development of the principles around the COD productivity system. COD stands for Collect, Organize, and Do, and every sound productivity system has this at its core; it’s nothing new. You need to collect all the inputs you receive in a trusted place – a digital inbox in your notes app, a task manager, or a simple notebook. No matter what tool you use to collect all these commitments, events, and ideas, you need to trust that you will collect everything there.

Then you set aside some time to organize everything you collected. Where will you put it so you will not forget it? For that, we have task managers, notes apps, and calendars.

And finally, you need to be doing the work. Nothing else matters if you have an excellent collection system and everything is beautifully organized, but you aren’t doing the work, you are procrastinating. All systems require you to be doing the work.

Many pour scorn on the prioritization method of older time management systems. The argument is that no matter how essential you decide something is, if you don’t have the tool or are in the right place or with the right person, no amount of urgency will help you to complete that task unless you pick up the right tool, move to the right place or person. And that is perfectly true.

However, we live in the twenty-first century, and most of these productivity systems were developed in the 1980s and 1990s. Technology has moved on a lot since then. In 1997, you had to be in your workplace with your work computer to reply to your work email. Very few companies provided their employees with laptops, and the dawn of the smartphone, as we know it today, was a decade away. We also worked mainly with paper files and large filing cabinets. It was a different world thirty years ago!

Today, your smartphone has more power than even the most powerful office computer from the mid-1990s. You can respond to your emails, write reports, and update spreadsheets. You can even design a presentation, all from that little device in your pocket.

Communications are very different today, too. With Microsoft Teams, FaceTime and Zoom, we no longer need to be face-to-face with people to have a meaningful meeting. And these communications can be done from almost anywhere using any digital device.

Knowing what to work on and when is possibly the most challenging areas of our lives. There are many distractions, from the traditional distractions of our colleagues, customers, and bosses’ demands, to notifications from Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X, all demanding immediate attention. The boundary between our work and personal lives is blurred, and it is almost impossible to hide away and get on with some deep, meaningful, focused work.

To counter this, I realized that prioritization was the key. Enough inputs are coming at you daily to fill up a whole month of work. It would be impossible to manage all that work if you do not start to prioritize what you need to do.

Once you know what is important, the only thing you need to know is when a task needs doing. If a task does not need to be done this week, don’t worry about it. All you need to know when you plan your week is what needs to be done this week to have a successful week. And this is where the Time Sector System comes in.

The Time Sector System manages your tasks by when they need to be done.

Over the last few years, these systems have transformed my productivity and thousands of others through my blog, YouTube channel, podcast, and online courses. They have brought some sense, calm, and deliberate intention back into people’s lives by providing a system, or process, for doing work. It’s based on what matters most to you instead of putting out fires. It’s less about organizing and shuffling stuff around and more about identifying what matters to you through learning what your areas of focus are and and ensuring these are front and center of your day.

It means when you start a new day, you are clear about what needs to be accomplished, and you know that what you plan to do that day is meaningful and moves important things forward. It puts a stop to that feeling that all you are doing is waiting to be told what to do next and trying to keep a long line of plates spinning. In other words, it puts you back in control of your life.

This book is divided into a number of sections. First, we will discover what is important to you with your eight areas of focus.

Once you have established your areas of focus, we will then move into learning about COD and the Time Sector System.

After that, we will look at the common issues people face, and I will show you ways to eliminate these issues through building processes.

From there, you will gain strategies to be able to build your own system, a system that works for you, so you can begin to focus on the things that are most important to you.

To get the most out of this book, I would recommend you take your time. Do the exercises. These exercises are designed to assist you in building your own system. There may be suggestions and ideas that don’t fit how you work or how you run your life. That’s fine; it does not mean the system as a whole won’t work for you. I remember when I first wrote about managing projects in a notes app, and some readers immediately responded by saying it would not work for them. They never gave it a chance.

Any change in the way we do things will feel uncomfortable at first. But nothing will change unless you try something new. When I began managing projects in my notes app, it felt strange for a few weeks. I often found myself being pulled back to trying to manage projects in my task manager, yet I persisted, and now it’s just a natural way.

As you read through this book, keep an open mind. The ideas and methods work. They’ve already worked for thousands of people and transformed their relationship with time. If you are ready to clear your backlogs, work on the things that matter to you, and get back in control of your day, then read on!

“Lack of time is not the problem. Lack of direction is the problem.” – Zig Ziglar

Carl Pullein

Gangneung, South Korea

May, 2024