Task Management & Time Blocking Podcast: Recent Episodes
Francis Wade/Framework Consulting Inc.
You: A productivity enthusiast who manages an above-average number of tasks. You don’t mean to stand out, but you’re a bit different than most people...more creative, more driven and a bit more geeky.
When you see an opportunity to improve your task management or time blocking you want to change _something_ to make it better...but what?
Tune into the next episode of this podcast and get some answers. Make steady improvements in the way you handle your taskload. Cut errors and mistakes. After all, your peace of mind is at stake, so this is important.
The podcast goes deep into your ability to get things done. Don’t miss a single broadcast!
Music by Alex_MakeMusic from Pixabay
You are in charge of implementing your company’s new strategic plan. It includes some brilliant new ideas which should shake up your industry, and even introduce the world to a new category of products and services.
But you are a bit wary because prior strategic plans barely made it off the PowerPoint pages. They weren’t implemented due to a common complaint - no-one had the time.
You have every reason to be worried, but what should you do about the problem?
Tune into this episode to join me in tackling this wicked problem from two perspectives at once…task management and strategic planning.
Show Notes
Perfect Time-Based Productivity https://perfect.mytimedesign.com
How CEOs Manage Time (hbr.org) (Nohria/Porter)
Meetingless Meetings Link
How to Deal with Other People’s Weak Time Management Skills – Perfect Time-Based Productivity (mytimedesign.com)
You’re someone who launches personal projects to improve your task management. You have made a number of changes in the past, but you haven’t seen the impact you wanted from each effort.
Is there something going on that you cannot see? Are some changes more fruitful than others?
After all, you know a thing or two about systemic change: that seemingly small improvements can yield disproportionate, breakthrough results. It applies to other areas of life…but how about your task management?
Tune into this episode to hear from me and my special guest, Danielle Baily, as we tackle this challenging problem together.
You are a productivity enthusiast who has been around task management for a while. Over the years, you have made lots of useful improvements and can say that you have made tangible progress.
However, it’s been some time since you felt that before and after feeling… where you had a productivity problem, found a solution, implemented it and saw positive outcomes.
Getting that feeling of making progress is much more difficult. You just can’t find the improvements you want by following anyone’s one-size-fits-all approach.
Somehow, you must find your own way. If this is your first time listening to this podcast, you may not know that there are many others just like you.
But they don’t just listen to this podcast to hear from experts. They attend my conference on Task Management & Time Blocking, read my book, join the Mighty taskers community and enjoy the training I offer.
And they find other thought leaders in the vast world beyond one-size-fits-all solutions which help them continue their improvement journey.
Not that this is the easy path to follow. It definitely is not. But it’s the one that bears the greatest fruit in the long run. It requires fresh skills in self-diagnosis in your task management and time blocking.
If this engages you in any way, welcome to Season 2 of the Task Management & Time Blocking Podcast.
You have been listening to this podcast for a few episodes. You have taken note of the format, which is different. We don’t do traditional interviews, but instead we do problem solving sessions inviting some of the brightest minds in the world to tackle emerging issues.
But what is it like to host such a series? Have I learned anything from being the host and what can I share after 32 episodes?
In this solo episode, I’ll be sharing my experience and what you can take away from the lineup of guests I have had on the show.
Your company has come up with a bright idea. From now on, the announcement states, everyone will share the same task management software. It’s sold as a win-win for everyone.
But you quickly realize that this is a problem. Your favorite task management software will now be a side-show as you are forced to change your practices.
Gone are some things you like to do using your software’s new features. Also, there will be some shared tasks that everyone can see.
You’re not sure if this is a good thing or bad, or what you should do about it.
Tune into this episode to hear from me and my special guest, Renee Clair, as we solve this wicked problem together.
Almost everyone who time-blocks manually for enough time, starts to wonder what it would be like to automate some of the overheard. Wouldn’t it be nice to click a button and see everything instantly assigned to an optimal time slot in their calendar?
But does such software even exist? The good news is that it does and in this conversation with Dr Melanie Wilson, we update our prior 2018 recording comparing 6 auto-schedulers.
Should you be using one of these AI-infused apps? Tune in to find out what we discovered and you could save some time, stress and even money.
Are you someone who works really long hours, not because you are forced to maybe…you could really love what you’re doing! But you have an inkling that maybe if you put those hard work hours elsewhere, perhaps it could actually benefit your entire life…including the quality of work you’re doing.
If this resonates with you at all, join me and Jason VanDevere as we tackle this challenging issue.
So you made lots of progress in your task management in the past - you are no beginner. You probably read some books and followed some sound ideas and found yourself getting more effect, and more productive, and making fewer errors.
But lately…you feel as if you have stalled. You’re no longer growing in leaps and bounds the way you used to, and you miss that growth you once experienced.
Now, changes come slowly, if at all. What can you do about it? You’re tempted to give up and move onto something different because…well, there are other places in life where you can put in some effort and see some results.
But is that the tactic you really want? To give up? Do you have a choice? Are there alternatives?
Tune into this episode to hear from me and my special guest, Dr Bret Atkins, as we solve this challenging problem together.
You’re someone who launches personal projects to improve your task management. You have made a number of changes in the past, but you haven’t seen the impact you wanted from each effort.
Is there something going on that you cannot see? Are some changes more fruitful than others?
After all, you know a thing or two about systemic change: that seemingly small improvements can yield disproportionate, breakthrough results. It applies to other areas of life…but how about your task management?
Tune into this episode to hear from me and my special guest, Danielle Baily, as we solve this challenging problem together.
You are a productivity enthusiast, someone who loves to grow and learn in the area of your task management. You are aware of most of the gurus out there - the inventors of practices like GTD, apps like Todoist and devices like the Bullet Journal.
You also have realized at some point - maybe a long time ago, or just as you are listening to this episode, that one size does not fit all. In other words, even though gurus and developer claim that they have figured everything out, you know that’s not true. You have been around long enough to distrust anyone who tells you that they have the perfect solution.
But is that enough?
Perhaps this realization is just the beginning of a new journey.
In this solo episode I will look at the issues we all have with one-size-fits-all thinking and what you can do about it in the short-term and long-term.
Like most people who do knowledge work, there is a surplus of tasks waiting for you to complete everywhere you look. Your inboxes, todo lists, and task management software are full to the brim. You want to be on top, free of overwhelm… but there seems to be no way out.
Have you created a problem for yourself by writing down all your unfinished tasks? Does it make sense to save unread emails? Why can’t you just get rid of them all and pretend they never happened?
Maybe if you were a superstar in this area, you would never fall behind the job of emptying inboxes and todo lists. Is that even possible now…or in the future
In this solo episode, I’ll be sharing my most recent thoughts about the skill of Emptying and exploring new thinking that can help you make some headway.
So you’re a creative person and getting into the Flow State is the key to your success. Like Michaelangelo or Leonardo, you use focused high energy times to do your best work. And you love it.
BUT… you have a Tik Tok account and the people you’re following are a growing distraction…and you can’t help yourself…you just want to take a peek…and another…
And when someone forcibly takes away your smartphone, you are able to focus, but then you overfocus and work for 15 hours straight, and then collapse. At that point you hate to return to your computer.
Getting and staying in the Flow state is not so easy after all.
Tune into this episode to hear from me and my special guest, Manlio lo Giudice, as we solve this challenging problem together.
You’re a productivity AND technology enthusiast which means that you are managing lots of inboxes. Each time you sign up for a new one, they give you another.
But is that a good thing? Or just another loose end you need to account for in your weekly review?
If it’s the latter, then why? In this episode we tackle the problem of Capture Points - physical and digital places where potential tasks are sitting…waiting. We’ll talk about your need to handle each and every one of them…or else. That is, if you hope to develop a flawless reputation for being on top of all the stuff people send your way, wanting a response.
Join me on this solo episode as we explore this challenge that affects every single knowledge worker in the entire world. It’s a continuation of Episode 21 on Capturing.
So you’re a career person who has a family…..AND you want to return to school. But in your mind you can’t see how to reconcile the image you have of student life with your current obligations. After all, you have a job, a family, a commitment to your wellbeing, a spiritual life, friends, you belong to a community…all these things are not on the typical college students’ agenda.
In fact, most students seem to put these things on hold…on ice…while they focus everything on their studies. You cannot do that, to say the least.
Is there a way to have it all? You do know that people have done this before…you’re not the first. So there must be a way that can increase your odds of success.
But what are they?
Tune into this episode to hear from me and my special guest, Emily Cordwell, as we solve this challenging problem together.
You have noticed that as you make more promises to people to get things done, the risk of not delivering goes up. Sometimes, the fact that you made the commitment falls through the cracks…as if it were never made.
Over time, this reduces your effectiveness and your reputation for getting things done. People start to avoid you, seeking out others who are more reliable.
You want to intervene before this gets worse, but just trying harder to remember may not be enough. You want a real solution such that you manually capture new tasks flawlessly, regardless of the circumstances. You want to be someone who never forgets to complete a commitment.
Where can you start to create that kind of track record when it comes to your task management?
Join me on this solo episode as we explore this challenge that affects all knowledge workers.
When it comes to task management, you know that one size doesn’t fit all. AND You are someone who has increased your workflow over the years - more tasks than ever, and a future of more task management, not less. At the moment your current approach works BUT…you suspect that it may run into problems as you add that project/child/hobby/elder-care/sport/travel/promotion/continuing education/high schooling-to-college-to-marriage to kids…
How do you adjust your approach when you realize that you need to change your methods as task volume increases…and you can only see a future or more tasks? Knowing that this is a problem isn’t enough - you want more.
Tune into this episode to hear from me and my special guest, Dr. Frank Buck, as we solve this challenging problem together.
Like everyone else who does knowledge work, you receive a lot of emails - more than you’d like. You have harbored dreams of a world in which you could escape this hated chore, but over here in reality, there seems to be no way to alleviate the pain. Or is there?
Some people suggest that you simply ignore most of your email. Others say that you need to empty your inbox and even keep it that way all the time. In practice, most people spend more mornings, nights and weekends catching up on email than they care to admit. During the day, they prefer to do what they call “real” work. Not the fake work of reading and replying to email.
In this solo episode, I’ll be sharing my thoughts about this problem and explore new thinking that can help us make some headway.
COVID disrupted many of our regular routines, some of which have not recovered. In particular, if you work from home, you may notice that seeing the same people every day and working in the same space is quite convenient. But it’s also predictable - in the bad way. Many of us have lost a certain thrill that comes from being in close proximity to others and the surprises which go with it. They don’t invite us out as often, and we don’t meet up as frequently…outside of Zoom.
In a way, we don’t have as many new things to look forward to. Not surprisingly, this has an impact on our daily happiness. Having something – anything – to look forward to has an impact on our happiness.
Is there a sustainable solution to this dilemma?
I’m Francis Wade and join me and our special guest, Laura Vanderkam as we tackle this challenge.
You have tried using contexts for your tasks in the past, perhaps following the advice of GTD. The idea was a sound one, and made a positive contribution. But as time went on, the technique seemed to lose its potency. The question is “Why?”
And did this experience imply that you needed to stop using them altogether? This may not make sense, because when you applied contexts to a raw list of todos, it made things better. So is the idea a bad one?
In this solo episode we take a deep dive into the research behind contexts done by 2Time Labs. I’ll share my latest thinking which shows why contexts are unavoidable, and why you need to move way past the ones suggested by Getting Things Done published in 2001.
If you're interested in using online calendars you may have seen ads for the auto-scheduler called Motion. You have probably wondered what it might be like to use it, but you don’t have the time or bandwidth for a proper test.
In this episode with Dr. Melanie Wilson we share the results of our actual firsthand tests for you. We both have spent years using auto-schedulers so we have a few insights you won’t hear elsewhere. Tune in to find out what we discovered and you could save some time, stress and even money.
Clarification - In this episode we stated the Motion does not have time maps, a SkedPal invention. It doesn't, but their version is similar in functionality - just not as robust.
You want to make improvements to your system of task management. You want to intervene at just the right place to have a positive overall effect, but you don’t know where to start.
You already understand that you use a system to manage your tasks from the moments of creation to the point where they are completed. Some people say that making changes is easy, but you’re not so sure. The system you use is full of idiosyncrasies - those places where you do things your way…different from anyone else.
How do you use this knowledge to make the right improvements? Can you make things worse by tinkering in the wrong place? Is it anything like trying to fix a car or an appliance where the wrong intervention can make things go terribly wrong?
In this solo episode, I’ll be sharing my thoughts about this problem and where we need to take ourselves so that the confusion disappears.
You’re a time blocker to some degree. This means you put tasks in your calendar…Not just appointments with people which can’t easily be changed, but solo time you commit to doing a particular task.
In other words, you make a promise to yourself that non-one else knows about to do something at a particular time and place.
It’s an easy concept to explain, But…most people who seem to start the practice have a rough time taking it to the level they want. Once they get past the beginner stage, when they are experimenting with a few tasks they want more.
And for a while, they schedule more tasks…and more…and more. Until they have too many and their time blocking becomes a problem. It should be easy, they think, but it’s not.
What are some of the best solutions available?
Tune into this episode to hear from me and my special guest, Mike Vardy, as we solve this challenging problem together.
Henry Cloud - Necessary Endings
Stack Method - Prasanth Nair
Stop doing productive.Start BEING productive. (productivityist.com)
You use lots of apps on a range of devices. Many of them have built-in notifications which are jostling for your attention. But if you leave them all on, you end up with a mess - a cacophony of alerts which do more bad than good.
What do you really want? To orchestrate them somehow into a perfect symphony that interrupts you at just the right moment, with the right degree of force.
Is that too much to ask for? In this solo episode, we’ll go past the work we did on Episode 11 which focused on the principles of skillful interrupting and look at the practical actions we must take to retain our sanity.
You are someone who time blocks. A quick glance at your calendar would show that you have put some thought into each day’s plan. But what happens when you get to the end of the year and realize that you haven’t accomplished your most important goals?
For example, some gurus at marriagebuilders.com recommend that you spend 15 hours per week in solo time with your spouse. You may block the time in your calendar with a recurring appointment, but realize after a year that you fell far short. Why does this happen? Is it even avoidable?
Tune into this episode to hear from me and my special guest, Trevor Lohrbeer, as we solve this challenging problem together.
You are someone who loves to focus on what is important in the moment. In fact, there may be few things more cherished than being in the Flow state, getting your best work done. When it’s happening, time flies by and sometimes you feel euphoric.
But too much of a good thing is never good, and if you have ever missed a mid-day meal because you were engrossed in your work you may know that you sometimes need a reminder, or interruption, at just the right moment. They keep you on track, and prevent you from making mistakes.
But how do you program them into your life? In this solo episode, I’ll be sharing my thinking about this problem and what needs to be invented for us to get some permanent relief.
Have you ever wondered whether or not you're a time optimist?
So you're someone who uses time blocking as a regular technique... You put tasks in your calendar so that you can make realistic commitments.
But do you still run into the problem of time optimism, where you're allocating time, and things take far longer than you thought? This creates a ripple effect that affects everything you try to do.
How do you even tackle a problem that afflicts almost everyone? Even those who don't use a calendar at all?
You are a productivity enthusiast who wants to experience one improvement after another. This kind of progress is sweeet. Like dominoes falling. Or climbing from one level to the next in a challenging video game.
But once you know the problem you want to fix, it's hard to find simple solutions. The proof? Just check out someone asking for help in an open forum like Reddit.
Someone posts a question, and wants a simple answer they can actually use. What do they get back? A ton of answers. There is no way to make sense of the flood of opinions...some of them openly contradict each other.
Heck, I came across a big one the other day reading Getting Things Done. On p40 and 142 of the 2001 book, David Allen strictly prohibits time blocking. But on page 87 he says Quote "I recommend that you create a block of time to initiate this process..."
It ought to be easier to find simple solutions than this!
Well...our job in this episode is to ask the question "Why aren't simple task management solutions easier to find?"
As a productivity enthusiast, you are hooked on making improvements. For any number of reasons, you are intrigued by the idea of making progress by continually shaping your behaviors, apps and devices. For that reason you pay attention to advertisements and read articles.
But how in the world do you make sense of the hundreds of suggestions made to you each day from people around the internet. A long time ago, you could chase down every lead.
But now, there are endless rabbit holes to go down. How do you get to the point where you don’t try to pay attention to them all, or unhook yourself from chasing down bright, shiny improvement objects?
Tune into this episode to listen to me and my special guest, Carl Pullein, as we solve this challenging problem together.
So...you are thinking about registering for the Task Management & Time Blocking Virtual Summit, or maybe you have already registered. You want to make the most of the learning experience, like any growth opportunity you life presents you.
But you want to make sure you choose wisely. There is more to do, videos to watch, people to meet - than you can do in three days, even if you don't get much sleep. How can you make the most of the event?
In this short episode, I'll let you know how you can maximise the opportunity. It's the Task Management & Time Blocking Podcast...and I'm talking about the Task Management & Time Blocking Summit coming up on March 3-5, 2022.
There are hundreds of small ways you can improve your task management - just do a Google search. To be efficient, we want to focus our efforts on those changes which make the biggest difference, so we don’t waste time, energy and money. But how do we determine which changes are more important than others? What if we view our task management as a system rather than a set of disconnected parts?
Tune into this episode of the Task Management & Time Blocking Podcast to listen to me and my special guest, Art Gelwicks, as we solve this challenging problem together.
When you only had a small list of tasks it was easy to make improvements. You took your productivity in this area seriously, and you made some good changes. You expected to continue in the same vein indefinitely.
However, as you moved to the next level, and the next, it seemed to become harder to keep up the same pace of improvements. In fact, you may have felt like you were stalling. Compared to the early gains you had made, now...it was as if nothing were happening.
Tune into this episode as we explore this frequent problem which afflicts those who are most interested in continuous growth.
How do you stay productive when you work for a company that puts in place a policy which changes the way you manage your tasks? You want to be as effective as possible, but if they restrict access to the task management tools you prefer, you need some strategies to prevent unwanted mistakes from happening.
Tune into this episode of the Task Management & Time Blocking Podcast to listen to me and my special guest, Augusto Pinaud, as we solve this challenging problem together.
What do problems in your task management indicate?
When your task management system fails, you may feel a sense of letdown. You wanted it to work perfectly. But here you are looking at a reality you never intended.
Most of us would feel some negative emotions like guilt or shame. But there's another approach to take altogether, which is based on a new way to think about these failures. What if there were a way to be empowered, rather than defeated, that has nothing to do with positive thinking. Tune in to this episode as we solve this challenging problem together.
How do you manage those tasks which you can't control? You wish you could be completely in charge but there are some which come from life/boss/spouse/kids/the government that you don't have a choice about.
What do you do about those?
Here on this podcast, I'll tackle this problem with Ray Sidney Smith and we're hoping to gain some insights and possible solutions that will be brand new...all in real time.
A time demand is an internal, individual commitment to complete an action in the future.
How do you take your task management and time blocking to the next level? With so many bits and pieces of advice out there, it should be easy to figure out a plan of improvement, or at least your next step.
But there's no single place you can trust that will help you come up with your next, best improvement. Here on the podcast, we'll help by first offering up a tricky ask management problem, then exploring a range of possible solutions...all in real time.
The point is to do more than just offer cliches or repeat stuff said elsewhere. We want to come up with something new...every time!
Trailer for the Task Management & Time Blocking podcast with a little splash!
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