The Philosophy Behind The Ground Breaking Time Sector System.
This year, the Time Sector System is five years old! For thousands of people it has changed their relationship with tasks and time in so many positive ways. Today’s question concerns the basics of the Time Sector System and its philosophy. You can subscribe to this podcast on: Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The YouTube Time Sector System Playlist Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived Subscribe to my Substack Take The NEW COD Course The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 361 Hello, and welcome to episode 361 of the Your Time, Your Way 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 of this show. I still remember the day that the Time Sector concept came to me. I was walking to the gym one sunny afternoon and was reflecting on my overwhelming task list waiting for me at home. I remember thinking to myself that all these tasks hitting me day after day was not sustainable. I was organised and knew where everything was, but I felt trapped in a cycle of never-ending tasks and emails. Whenever I feel this way about anything I always tell myself that there must be a better way. And then it hit me. I think it was the word “unsustainable”. The number of emails I was getting was never going to reduce. It was going to increase. The amount of work I had to do was equally never going to reduce. At some point I would reach breaking point. It wasn’t the work itself. It was time. I just didn’t have enough time. That was the clue. You cannot control the number of tasks, messages, and emails you receive. It’s a random number. Yet, the one constant—a constant not controlled by you or me, but by science, and in particular physics, is time. Time is our constraint. If I could allocate time for doing the different categories of work I had to do and decide when to do the tasks in those categories, it would not matter how much work I had coming in. Everything would get done in due course. And that was the seed that sprouted into the Time Sector System five years ago. So, with the history told, it’s time now to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Elaine. Elaine asks, “Hi Carl, I recently came across one of your videos where you talk about the Time Sector System. Could you explain its philosophy and how it differs from other time management systems?” Hi Elaine, Thank you for your question. The thinking behind the Time Sector System is that we are limited not by what we can do—we can do a lot—but by how much time we have to do things. We need to eat, sleep and move (exercise), at our basic level. On top of that we likely have family commitments, school runs, doctor appointments and friends that need seeing. Then we have our work to do. The limiting factor is time. It’s fixed. We only get 24 hours a day. Now you can manipulate time by hiring people to do stuff for you. For example, you may be fortunate to be able to afford a nanny to take care of your kids when you are at work. Or, you may be able to hire an assistant. But no matter how you manipulate time, it’s still only 24 hours. So the philosophy behind the Time Sector System is, it’s not about what you have to do, it’s about when you will do it. After all, that’s the only thing you have control over. At a wider level, that means organising your tasks into tasks that need to be done this week, next week, this month, next month or long-term or on hold. When you divide your tasks up into when you will do them you narrow down the decisions you need to make on a day to day basis. When a new task comes in, you only need three questions: What is it