How to Get Started With COD

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How to Get Started With COD

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“In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics, you get shortsighted; if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.” That was Tom Seaver, an outstanding baseball player. And it points to an important factor in managing your time and being productive. And it’s a single word: Consistency. Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin The COD Productivity Method Learn more about the Quiet Productivity Method here Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 420 Hello, and welcome to episode 420 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. There seems to be a consistency crisis. If you were to analyse anyone who has been successful at anything, you would find that, hidden behind that success, lies a high degree of consistency in following the basics. Last week, I talked about your standards. Setting your standards and staying true to them. Well, a close relation to your standards is consistency. Yet, consistency is hard. It’s boring, and your brain is often your worst enemy. It tells you that you’re tired; you can take a rest. Or you can skip today. You’ve been busy; it’s okay. But it’s not okay. Not if you want to develop your consistency. So how can you stay consistent, even on your worst days? That’s what we’re looking at today. So, to get us started, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Stephan. Stephan asks, “Hi Carl, I’ve been following the COD system for almost a year now, and I know it works. Most days I do well. I collect, and I organise. But I am not consistent. What can I do to get consistent organising and planning my days? Hi Stephan, thank you for your question. Now, before we begin, I am not going to advocate that you turn yourself into a non-communicative monk. There does need to be some flexibility. Yet to succeed at anything, you will find that, somewhere in the mix, something needs to be done consistently. Something in the quote I began this podcast with from Tom Seaver jumped out at me. The line was: “If you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.” I know from experience and from feedback from those who have taken my Email Mastery course that if you consistently spend 30 minutes or more on your actionable emails, your email will never get out of control. The numbers take care of themselves. This means when you plan your day, you ask yourself where you will find time for communications. Managing your communications is not about the number of messages you get. We all get too many. There are messages that need answering, messages for information we should read, and a lot of messages we can ignore and delete. But, when you begin the day, you have no idea how many you will get and of what type they will be. This means you cannot plan for the number or type of message that needs to be replied to. Numbers don’t count. Yet, if you know each day that you will spend at least 30 minutes on them, it’s unlikely you will ever have an out-of-control inbox. Some days you will clear them; other days, you won’t. But as long as you’re consistent, the numbers will stay low. Your consistency will take care of the numbers. When it comes to COD, that’s the collect, organise and do framework. The only area that needs deliberate consistency is the organising. You see, once you have established your UCT (Universal Collection Tool), you will naturally collect everything that needs to be collected. And if you have that set up properly, what you collect will drop into your trusted inbox. However, the key is organising what you collected and that involves asking three questions: What is it? A note, an appointment or a task What do I need to do with it? Move it to your calendar, add it to your notes or process the task so that you can ask… When will I do it? That would be either this week, next week, this month, next month or sometime in the long-term. If you consistently do the organising step, you will become very fast at organising. When I began following COD, I confess it would take me 20 to 30 minutes on some days. That was because I collected a lot, and asking and answering the three questions was slow. But I stuck to it. I went through the exciting first stage, then the boring middle (where you ask yourself if it’s worth it) and finally to the stage where it was automatic. And the benefit was that, as I was pushing through the ...

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