Carl Pullein is a renowned productivity and time management coach. With his hundreds of Youtube videos, podcasts episodes, blog, weekly newsletter, courses and books he helps people around the world to get their things done.
Carl Pullein loves to create himself and sees time management as a tool to achieve the things that are important in life. With his work, including his COD system, he is reducing the complexity of systems such as GTD Getting Things Done because he has “an allergy to complexity”.
This episode is for innovators that want to get things done.
Find Carl Pullein on his website, Apple Podcast and Youtube.
The COD system
Find Carl’s free COD course here. It is a great help.
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Videos mentioned
David Allen TEDx Talk
“The art of stress free productivity is a martial art.”
Richard St. John TED-Talk: 8 Secrets of Success
- Passion – have passion about what you do
- Work – do the hard work and have fun doing it – Workofrolics, be good at it and practice a lot
- Focus – focus on one thing
- Push – push yourself through shyness and self-doubt – have somebody to help you push
- Serve – serve others something of value
- Ideas – follow ideas – listen, observe, be curious, ask questions, problem solve, make connections
- Persist – through failure, crap (criticism, rejection, a**holes, pressure)
Joseph McClendon III
Transcript
This is an automatic transcription which was slightly edited. The text is raw and might contain errors.
Klaus Reichert
This is the 2.5 conversations connecting innovators. My name is Klaus. This podcast is hosted in Baden-Württemberg in Germany. Today I’m talking to a Productivity coach Carl Pullein about the motivation to innovate and about getting things done this an innovator and about the love for creating things with his hundreds of videos on YouTube. His podcast, is blog articles, his newsletter. Carl is helping lots of people around the world getting their things done doing the things that are important for them. Helping innovators to create things. Let’s start the show.
Klaus
I’m here with Carl Pullein and it’s a great pleasure to have you on the podcast Carl. Thank you very much for joining me.
Carl
Well thank you very much for inviting me.
Klaus
This is a great pleasure to talk to you.
Klaus
You’re a world renowned productivity expert. You do a lot of videos online. You do you have your own podcast. I’m really impressed by all the work that you’re doing that you’re putting out there. A lot of it is free. A lot of this is that you do it just to support people to move on. And I think that is very very impressive to see that.
Carl Pullein
Well it is actually my goal is to try and help a million people to become better organized and more productive because I know that that really helps reduce stress levels and you know stress is never a good thing. So my way of helping is by helping people to become better organized and more productive.
Klaus
But but you’re not a doctor.
Carl
No not at all.
Klaus
So it’s like the productivity clinic that you’re doing.
Carl
Yes. That’s probably about it.
Klaus
Do you accept people that have some sort of health insurance to pay for courses and coaching? 🙂
Carl
No I’ve not been FDA approved yet so sadly it’s not the way to go.
Klaus
Carl, please complete this sentence: Getting Things Done GTD is….
Carl
… one of the best productivity methodologies you could invest your time in. It is I think now the foundation of probably almost every productivity system out there because the fundamentals are just well made, they just make perfect sense it’s like collect everything and decide what it means to you put it in a place where you can find it and then do it when it needs doing. That’s a really really really basic outline of what GTD getting things done is but essentially it is now the framework if you like for pretty much every system out there these days you just described GTD in a very short manner a few sentences only.
Klaus
And some people are out there that try to make to try to change that into some sort of science special signs and make it very special and hard to understand. When I look at your stuff and your courses your videos I get the impression that you like simple things are the way you explain GTD is something simple so everybody can relate to it and pick up the methodology quite easily.
Carl
Well I have an allergy to complexity. I just I just complete as soon as something becomes complex I turn off and but if it’s something that I really want to understand I will do it I’ll do go through it and read the books and read the data but then I have to break it down into really simple terms and kind of thing. What was what was the goal here. What’s the outcome that we’re trying to achieve with this methodology or this system or or this approach. And again I will always come back to basic principles because then I can understand it and I can teach it once I understand it properly so.
Klaus
So you’re doing some sort of translation from say complex too easy to understand or make it digestible in the way you present it in different elections for example.
Carl
Well I think for me it’s about how to make it practical for people to use on a daily basis. I think a lot of particularly academics and I don’t have anything against academics but but academics tend to as are on such a high theoretical level it’s very hard to connect that to not necessary the real world but to a practical application and I suppose the way I look at it is I want to be the bridge between that you know between the theoretical idea behind something and the real practical everyday use of that idea because there’s some really good ideas out there but they’re often way too complex for people to want to implement in a daily basis.
Klaus
That’s interesting because I think that of my my consulting and coaching work also. But what I find is that some people don’t take that seriously. They don’t understand the simplest or the beauty of simplicity and confuse that with maybe not knowing enough.
Carl
Well it does that. And I think there’s a lot of things that when you when you dive into that complexity there’s too much to take in. And quite often I mean if I think back to the Getting Things Done book for example you’ve probably got a hundred pages on collecting but really when we’re collecting what are we doing. Something’s on your mind. Get it off your mind. But actually if you read those 100 pages it just it does make complete sense and it gives you so many different scenarios where you would probably not think about collecting an idea. But when she read the book you realize, Ah that makes sense. But you know the idea of collecting for me is important.
Carl
I mean people come up with these wonderful thing it’s the UCT which is ubiquitous collection tool.
Carl
Really it just means a phone these days because it collects everything on a phone or before the smartphone certainly was like a little notebook. Yeah that was the UCT but it has this really smart complex expression for it but I use that jokingly now. But people did actually use what’s your use. I’m going: What? You know ubiquitous collection tool huh? You mean a piece of paper. Yes.
Klaus
It’s like the rocket science term.
Carl
Yeah. Exactly. They’re using way complex terms for somebody that you know something on your mind get into something you know a notebook a phone. Anything just get it written down.
Klaus
Into your inbox.
Carl
Yeah. I mean then you go down the steps you know you go down the road of getting things done or or whatever because then you’ve got to process it you decide what is it what does it mean to use it does get a little bit more complex but you know we tend to we as human beings we have a bad habit of over complicating things.
Klaus
I’ve seen several of your videos or your courses and it was very obvious to me that you’re trying to sort of use the same speed that people have so that they don’t get lost in your course. You are trying to make things very simple and cut it down into small pieces so people can digest it and I found that very very good too to see even. I am also some sort of productivity expert myself but it helped me a lot to understand some things better so I’m. Thank you very much for that.
Carl
It is always a pleasure to help people.
Klaus
Yeah so but we all have to thank David Allen and some say it’s better not to meet your heroes but all you have had recently interviewed him for your own podcast. How was that to meet the creator of getting things done for you as an experience.
Carl
I think he’s a fantastic guy. I mean I actually met him in Seoul three years ago. We had lunch together here in Seoul when he was visiting. He did a book publishing tour in Korea. And I met him here in Seoul and so I’ve actually met him before. So he’s a really really nice guy and one of the things that always struck me when I met him in person was that he is probably one of the most relaxed people I’ve ever met. I mean he genuinely does live the GTD life. Everything is in control and when we had lunch you know he was all there 100 percent. Even though he was waiting for a call from his assistant to give him the flight time to Tokyo. So he didn’t know whether it was going to be later that evening or it was gonna be first thing in the morning. Now if that was me and I was waiting to find out you know sometime in the next few hours I might be flying I would be quite stressed. But he was just well I nothing I can do now I just have to wait for the call and plus I have a system I can rely on.
Klaus
That’s very very cool. I remember a TED talk he has given where he also seemed very relaxed about his system and that was very very good to see him in person at least in video.
Carl
Yeah. No he really does genuinely live the system and he is a very very nice guy and I love the chat that I had with him on my podcast about you know GTD and everything was just fantastic. Even every time I hear him speak I learn something new it is just you know he’s one of those things that is one of those guys who’s had 40 50 years of you know of living this GTD lifestyle if you like. Mm hmm. And it really shows and you can pick pick up things every time you hear him speak or whatever you do learn something.
Klaus
I guess once you have written the book one could assume that this person doesn’t really develop the whole thing further. But actually it’s once you have started ideas and they have their own life in your head and they further develop and probably you would have to write another book to include all the things he has learned over the past 30 years.
Carl
Well he did update. He updated the GTD in 2015. So that was what 14 years after it first came out he did update it but actually interestingly on the last month I went to Tony Robbins event in Singapore which is an amazing event. But before I went I started reading his books and he’d written two books on self development books and he wrote them in the early 1990s. And what I found fascinating was many of the principles he wrote about in the early 1990s he’s still teaching today but he’s teaching it in a more modern version. So the analogies the stories that he uses to illustrate the principle have been updated. So in the early 1990s he was talking about President Reagan for example because I think President Reagan was not it wasn’t long after he stopped being president.
Carl
I think I see he did mention George Bush as well with the original George Bush not George Bush junior. And so it was kind of interesting that these stories that he wrote then but these days the principles the foundations of what he’s teaching is still the same today but with newer stories.
Carl
So it’s like time proven principles, they still very much apply today.
Klaus
Interestingly enough you are basing your work on the GTD method but you also made it even more accessible with your COD or the two plus eight systems that you have developed.
Carl
Yeah because when I looked at my own way of using GTD I realized I was using it really COD which was just collect organize and do. And I think when I first read the GTD book I was spending 40 50 percent of my time just organizing my system and I realized hang on a bit. That’s not what this is meant to be you know. And so but that’s normal. I think a lot of people do that. But you refine it over time. And what I discovered after a few years is that I wasn’t really following exactly the GTD system anymore. It evolved into its own thing which I when I analyzed it when I kind of stepped back and said Well what am I actually doing here and collecting. Because you cannot avoid that but I am organizing which means that what I’ve collected has to go to its rightful place. And then the rest of time I’m doing so I’m not following necessarily the five GTD steps. I’m just following three steps.
Klaus
But that way it’s much more accessible for most of the people.
Carl
I think it is. I think for most people find it much easier to because the COD system it is just a framework you know you choose whatever tools you want to use you use those tools.
Carl
It’s how you work it because everyone thinks differently.
Carl
How about if you have lots of stuff that sort of enters your system then it’s sort of collecting part will be will take a lot of time. Is that still covered with COD.
Carl
Well it is because the whole point with COD for me when I when I know I said it’s 100 pages on collecting in the GTD book I could probably write a hundred pages and collecting too because what it really comes down to is how fast can you make it. Because the faster you can make collecting the less likely you will resist.
Klaus
OK. Does this come from your experience as a runner, as a sportsperson?
Carl
Well yeah in a sense yes it’s just it comes back was when when I thought about why is it that I don’t do something it’s because it’s too difficult or it’s going to take too much time. So if I can reduce that barrier to doing something so a really really classic example and everyone can try this one of the best things you can do when you wake up in the morning is to drink a glass of water.
Carl
It’s just scientifically proven to instantly give you an amazing amount of energy and it’s just it just makes you feel brilliantly. But the problem the reason why most people won’t do it is because they don’t prepare the water the night before. But if you get a glass of water. Ideally if you get a flask so then it stays cold and you put it at the side of your bed you’ve reduced the resistance so when you wake up it’s there you drink. But if you don’t you probably go put the kettle on and make coffee first OK. And you might even forget to try. Yeah. Often you will forget to do it. So the idea is is that you reduce the resistance so you put the glass of water next to your bed. So when you wake up. Bang.
Carl
So that’s a very simple example for reducing the resistance and you can use that.
Klaus
You should use that for any bigger task that you have if you actually want to get it done.
Carl
Yeah. So when it comes to the COD system it’s about really making sure that collecting is easy even if it just means have a pad and a pen on. If you’re right handed on the right hand side of your desk if you’re left handed on the left hand side of your desk because even that if you think I’ll remember it you won’t do well you will forget it. So if you if you can just pick up with your writing hand and just quickly write it down. You know that’s one way. Another one is learn the keyboard shortcuts on your computer if you’re based you know sat at a desk most of the day. I know for me to collect something into Todoist which is the to do list I use I just use shift command A and I just do that without thinking.
Klaus
I started using my iPhone and Siri to dictate these things. And it works quite well also.
Carl
Yeah Siri is a great one for it as well and I use an app on there as well for the same thing just so fast. But once you reduce the resistance you will collect great learning.
Klaus
It surely helped you to be more productive. Your own system and GTD the last time I checked you created 645 videos on YouTube 100 podcast episodes. Also a bunch of courses and books. Where do you get your energy and your motivation from to do all that giant work.
Carl
Well for me the biggest one is I love creating that that’s just my brain never switches off it’s always thinking of new ideas. So I love the creation part. But a lot of it is I don’t know this is something about helping people. And I remember years ago people say you know I think it was a TED talk I watch was I think it’s the secrets of success by Richard St. John or something I can’t remember his name but it’s a TED talk that was done years ago and he said that don’t do for money do it to serve or something like that. And I was you know 10 15 years ago I get poo Ha ha ha ha. You know that is just rubbish. But actually you do when you start doing it to help other people you genuinely feel like so much better if you’re just doing it for the money. It’s it’s empty. It’s not a good feeling but when you’re doing it because you genuinely want to help people it’s that feeling of fulfillment that you get. That really drives you to keep going and I think for me that’s one of the things I mean I can’t imagine not doing my YouTube videos. I mean that’s free content that I’m doing. I just love doing them every week and a couple of weeks ago I was in hospital having just minor surgery a hernia operation just a minor surgery and I’m laying in the hospital bed having just come out to the operating room thinking when am I going to be able to do my videos.
Carl
I was thinking you know really I should be taking a break here. I don’t think people will be upset if I miss this week but I was really uncomfortable missing the idea of missing doing a video.
Klaus
So did you help yourself with say your iPhone and do a quick recording anyway.
Carl
No I did manage to wait. I came out to the hospital on the Thursday and on the Friday I recorded this video. So I felt very comfortable once it was done.
Klaus
OK. So it’s not wrong to say you are very very driven.
Klaus
When I work with companies I always say I’ll ask for the vision that they are following and because actually it’s the same wording
Carl
If you do it for the money it doesn’t work but if you do it for some let’s say greater thing or greater goal. Lots of things happen. Extra people are more motivated for example or more willing to listen or whatever. So that has to be something very very genuine and the vision that you have for that you combined with your motivation is you want to help one million people.
Carl
I don’t know how I’m going to measure that by the way it’s because technically on my YouTube channel when I was looking it’s that I think there’s been over 2 million views but the problem there is how many people how many individual people is that that’s just views. You know the podcast is at well over 100000 downloads. But again that’s could be one person multiple downloads. So I don’t know how I’m going to measure it. But you know the vision is to be able to help a million if not 10 million 100 million people over the next 5 10 20 years. Because I’ve seen the benefits of being better organized and more productive and good with time management. I’ve seen the benefits. I never I never feel stressed. I certainly never feel like I’ve got too much work on and it is actually a really nice feeling because it helps you to make better decisions. And I find a lot of people I work with here in Korea. They said I haven’t got time to get organized. I was thinking aha. You know well here’s where the bigger problem is.
Klaus
You know I don’t have time for time management. Exactly.
Carl
But is there something that you’d tell them like a like a simple sentence that that makes them understand that they should do something about that well use a simple question to ask themselves where do you think this is going to end up know because you are only human you’re not a machine. Something will break you know either you will make a huge mistake one day and get fired and lose the job that you’re spending all this time working on. Or just mentally and physically you will break. And you know you’ve got to get people to really understand like right now they may feel they can manage it but in the long term if you don’t get a handle on that time and the amount of work and how you’re managing that stress level it really can be a huge problem in the long term. And so and another one that you can do is always point out the really successful people in their company I don’t know those people but I say you know how do they manage their time. And you know when they start because modelling you know modelling successful people modelling the people you admire is a great way to learn. And you know we all have different heroes.
Carl
So it’s about finding the right people and thinking how do they do that and you know I’m always looking at how successful people manage their time. And some really fascinating insights.
Klaus
I have read somewhere that for you, productivity and time management is something that is actually comes down to life management not just to get things done but to get things accomplished in life over a longer period of time to get the stuff done that are important for you for your life for the life of the people around you.
Carl
It is I mean that’s to me that’s what it really boils down to is I was about to say spend less time at work and more time at home. But that doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. It’s about really being managing your time so that you can spend more time doing the things that you want to do with the people that you want to do it with.
Carl
That’s to me what time management and productivity is all about and what I really like is that you combine that with let’s say the call to action to do like a year planning at the end of a year like right now it’s October and you are asking people to pick up or to start to collect ideas for the next year or two to get into the thinking process and into our planning process for the next year. And I think that’s a very clever and good combination because it’s not about doing things it’s about getting the framework or the priorities for the things to do in the next year.
Carl
It’s about bubbles you know bubbling up the ideas doing it. Now in October because the one of the main reasons why New Year’s resolutions don’t work there’s multiple reasons why they don’t work. But one of the biggest reasons is people get to like the Christmas period and the 26th or 27th or the 28th of December until new year. What am I going to do. And then they rush and they just think oh I’ll quit smoking I’ll cut down drinking I’ll lose weight and you’re all the same ones and they fail.
Carl
And then what happens is they get into these cycles. “I’m no good at resolutions or goals.” “I keep failing” but actually it’s not that. It’s not that they’re no good at doing goals it’s just they’re approaching it in the wrong way. If you start in October just brainstorming ideas just thinking about what would you like to change about yourself what would you like to change away about the way you work your lifestyle just thinking about how the things that you would like to change by the time we get to December you’ve probably got five to 10 things that you think you know what I could do something and change that and make things better. And so it’s always good to start. And October is a great time going into the last quarter. We’re all winding down the year and it’s time to get excited about the next year.
Klaus
What about if you if you are in it not just about yourself but about say your team you’re part of the company or your company if you’re like a startup or working for a small company. Is there some process yet that you can recommend in one of your courses for example that helps the team to come to to prepare the next year.
Carl
Well for team based productivity is really comes down to the communication from the top.
Carl
You know whenever I’ve helped companies in general with their productivity I can guarantee that one of the biggest problems is going to be how the objective or outcome of that they’re trying to achieve is communicated in hearing career. There’s whenever they do that in English they have this bad habit of using very big words and long sentences and there’s just no emotion or meaning and it looks good it looks great. I mean there’s a lot of complex words in there but when I’m thinking about death that’s not going to motivate anybody. So the way that the way that project goals or outcomes are communicated or goals for the next year or the things that you want to achieve next year within a team how you communicate those is really really important is to being clear simple actionable terms. And so that people can measure.
Carl
So I’ve had one company where just the sales team had 32 KPI is key performance in the analysis going. How can that be key performance indicators when there’s 32 of them I mean. Which one do I focus on. You know it’s impossible. You know pick one and measure it and stick with it and they will have a lot more success.
Klaus
I sometimes hear innovators talking about something like Oh there’s so many possibilities so many opportunities are so many ideas and there’s just so little time to have an idea of how to select from a large number of ideas and opportunities. If you’re just full of ideas as I say a startup person as a creator as an innovator.
Carl
That’s an interesting when I heard I heard an analogy on this one recently. I wish it was mine but it isn’t. But there’s a guy who I was a teacher at the event I was in Singapore called Joseph McClendon III. And he was talking about the same thing and he said look if you think about it as a horse race and you know you’ve got like these 10 horses when the gates opened 10 horses run out and you have no idea which horse is going to win.
Carl
So what do you do. You just pick one just pick one and run with it. Because how do you know which is going to be the successful one at some point in the race and at some point in the process of developing that one idea you will realize it’s not going to work and you can jump off onto a different horse or you can jump off onto a different idea.
Carl
You know I’ve had loads of ideas for courses and often a lot of them I will just start I think this is a really good idea and I start planning it out and I could spend a week planning it out in my spreadsheets and you know organizing how I’m going to do the lessons and at the end of the week and going you know what.
Carl
This isn’t going to work you know. I don’t feel it and I’ll just scrap it and some may say well you’ve just wasted a week I thought. Now what I’ve done is I’ve learned that that’s not going to work. Here’s the way the way that I’m looking at it it’s taken me a week to figure out but he’s not going to work. But I don’t throw away the actual planning sheets. I just you know I archive them. I might come back to that in a year or two’s time. But it does. You’ve just got to pick something and run with it. I think a lot of people don’t achieve their potential because they get paralyzed by all these ideas and this comes back to GTD or card collect the ideas store them in a place but pick one and run with it. And you know you’ll soon figure out whether it’s gonna be a success or not a success. You know if you think about when Microsoft started and Bill Gates and his team I think is Paul Allen you know was sitting in the dormitory coding all night trying to get dos created you know at that time they did not know it was going to be successful. True. Nobody knew it. It did become successful and we look at it from the perspective of 2019. But if you were back in 1985 or whenever they were writing that code they had no idea if this was gonna be a success or not. But they just went with the idea and it turned out to be a huge success. And I’m pretty sure it is the same with Steve Jobs and Steve was the arc and all the other people like the Google boys when they started Google they did not know at that time whether it’s gonna be successful or not. But they just run with the idea and it developed and it became what is today Google. I bet you the vision about you where Google is today the Google boys as I call them I bet they had no idea it was going to turn out that way when they were sat in their dormitory creating that first google search box. I bet they never expected it to turn out the way that it did. So you’ve got to start somewhere. You just got to run with it.
Carl
Okay. And it was probably just one of these things of their ideas that they worked on that they developed and that they felt good about Yeah it could have been they they may have worked on 20 30 40 50 ideas before they eventually got to the Google we have today so gut feeling is important too.
Carl
Yeah just pick something and go with it. Eventually you’ll figure out this isn’t going to work. And then you can go back onto something else but you’ve just got to go with it because the worst thing you can do is not do anything.
Klaus
Thank you Carl. I think that is a great way to finish our podcast. Thank you very much for having this conversation with me today.
Carl
It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for having me on the show.
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