How To Practice The Art Of Elimination
Podcast 212 This week’s question is all about getting your task manager clean and tight and ultimately more functional. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Download the Annual Planning Template Evernote link for the Annual Planning Template More about the Time And Life Mastery Course The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Episode 212 | Script Hello and welcome to episode 212 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show. One of the problems many people face with their task manager is the volume of tasks that appear on their today lists. And even if you are vigilant about when you add a date to a task, there often is still far too many tasks on the daily list. So, this week, I want to address that and share with you a few ways you can eliminate rather than accumulate tasks. Now before we get to the question, this will be the final episode for a couple weeks. Don’t worry, we will be returning on the 10th January. And, if you don’t want to miss out of all the productivity and time management content I produce each week, sign up for my weekly newsletter where every Friday you will receive all the content, PLUS a short essay with a tip on improving your overall productivity, time management and goal setting. The link to sign up is in the show notes. Okay, it’s time to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Gary. Gary asks, Hi Carl, I saw your recent video on how you have Todoist set up. I noticed you have very few tasks on your today list. Is that for real or was that just for show? Hi Gary, thank you for your question and yes, that was for real. Twice a year I show how I have evolved how I use Todoist, and in this videos I share my real Todoist account. Normally, I use a demo account. So, how I achieve that is by focusing on elimination and being very very strict about what gets into my system. Now, I should be careful here because I still collect a lot of stuff into my inbox. However, I am very strict on what goes from my inbox into my time sectors. This is where I practice the art of elimination. Let me explain. Firstly, I am obsessed with avoiding duplication. I hate it if there is a piece of work or a task in one app and I copy it over to my task manager. That act of copying it over to my task manager creates a duplicated task. For example. Like most people a lot of my tasks come from email and in the past I would forward these to Todoist’s inbox. That would easily generate fifteen to twenty tasks per day in my inbox. This meant I had the original email in my email system and a task for that email in my task manager which created duplication. Then when it came to processing my Todoist inbox, I had all the other tasks plus those emails to process. This meant those email tasks had now been processed twice and I still had done nothing about acting on them—which is crazy. I realised, if I created a folder in my email called “Action This Day” and any email that required me to do something was put in there, I only needed a single task in Todoist that recurred every day to remind me to clear that folder. This meant I no longer needed to go from Todoist to email, back to Todoist and then email again. It was a lot of unnecessary extra steps just to reply to a single email. Moving email within the email app itself is a lot easier and faster and I eliminate a complete step. It also means now all I need do is allocate a block of time later in the day to clear my action this day folder and all my email commitments are dealt with for an