Success in almost everything involves time management. It seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything that you need to do accomplished, but if you want to achieve much more than others in a shorter amount of time, you must improve how you manage that time.

Time management refers to how you schedule and organize your time for different activities. There are many different tools, and techniques to help you get more done in less time.

Here are some time management tips that will help you organize and manage the 24 hours in your day as efficiently as possible.

The Importance of Time Management

Time is your most precious resource. It is the most valuable thing you have. It is perishable, it is irreplaceable, and it cannot be saved. It can only be reallocated from activities of lower value to activities of higher value.

All work requires time.

The very act of taking a moment to think about your time before you spend it will begin to improve your personal time management and increase productivity immediately.

I used to think that time management was only a business tool, like a calculator or a cell phone.

It was something that you used to increase productivity and eventually be paid more money. Then I learned that time management is not a peripheral activity or skill. It is the core skill upon which everything else in life depends.

Eat That Frog!

“The first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog.” – Mark Twain

Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat that frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worse things that is going to happen to you all day long.

Your “frog” is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it.

If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first. This is another way of saying that if you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first.

Discipline yourself to begin immediately and then to persist until the task is complete before you go on to something else.

If You Have To Eat A Live Frog At All, It Doesn’t Pay To Sit And Look At It For Very Long

The key to reaching high levels of time management, performance, and productivity is to develop the lifelong habit of tackling your major task first thing each morning.

You must develop the routine of “eating your frog” before you do anything else and without taking too much time to think about it.

Successful, effective people are those who launch directly into their major tasks and then discipline themselves to work steadily and single-mindedly until those tasks are complete.

“Failure to execute” is one of the biggest problems in organizations today. Many people confuse activity with accomplishment. They talk continually, hold endless meetings, and make wonderful plans, but in the final analysis, no one does the job and gets the results required.

There Are No Shortcuts

Practice is the key to mastering any skill.

Fortunately, your mind is like a muscle. It grows stronger and more capable with use. With practice, you can learn any behavior or develop any habit that you consider either desirable or necessary.

What is your “frog?” What is the one task that you despise doing each day? Once you have chosen your “frog” make it a habit to wake up every morning and do that task first.

How to Manage Time Effectively

In order to make more money, you must learn how to manage time effectively. There are two major sources of value in the world of work today. The first is time and the second is knowledge.

Today, time is the currency of modern business. By using these 5 techniques to manage your time, you will put yourself on the fast track to success.

1. Develop A Sense Of Urgency

The most important measure of time is speed. The most important quality that you can develop with regard to time management is a “sense of urgency.”

A sense of urgency is the habit of moving fast when opportunity presents itself to you. Develop a bias for action. Fast tempo is essential to success. All successful people not only work hard, hard, hard, but they work fast, fast, fast!

2. Stop Procrastinating

Procrastination is not only the thief of time; it is the thief of life. You must develop the time management habit of moving quickly when something needs to be done. You must develop a reputation for speed and dependability.

As a general rule, small tasks should be done immediately, as soon as they appear. This habit of taking action quickly will enable you to get through an enormous amount of work in a day. It will earn you a reputation for being the kind of person to give jobs to when someone needs them done quickly.

3. Work In Real Time

Whenever possible, do your work in “real time,” as soon as it comes up. Stay focused and do it now. It is amazing how much time you can waste by picking up a task and looking at it or starting it, and then putting it down and coming back to it again and again.

General Time Management Skills

The preparation that you make in the evening for the day ahead will have an enormous effect on how successful you are. Here are some general time management skills that anyone can do that will help you get more done.

1. Always Think On Paper

Take a piece of paper and write down everything you intend to do. Include everything, even your plans to eat a healthy lunch and workout, prepare dinner for you and your family, every detail.

Then organize the piece of paper by asking yourself: “If I could only do one thing on this list today, which one thing would it be?”

And if I could only do two things which would be the second and the third? And then when you start first thing in the morning, start off with number one, and discipline yourself to work only on number one until it’s complete. Then move on to number two.

2. Avoid Distractions Like Email and Media

Checking your email in the morning makes getting off track entirely too easy. It starts with just one email, and before you know it, you’re several hours into your day and you still haven’t started on your number one task.

Keep your phone away from you or off to avoid distractions from your most important task.

3. Make Your List Of Written Tasks The Night Before

The final way for you to make sure you have a productive next day is to make this list of goals and tasks the night before.

Your ability to make good plans before you act is a measure of your overall competence. The better plan you have, the easier it is for you to overcome procrastination, to get started and then to keep going.

By writing down your goals before you go to sleep, you will think about the things you need to do and mentally prepare yourself to do them before you even wake up the next morning.

When you plan each day in advance, organize your list by priority, and stick to your plan, the work will go faster and smoother than ever before. You will feel more powerful and competent. You will get more done, faster than you thought possible. Eventually, you will become unstoppable.

Time Management Tool: Make a To-Do-List

Make a To-Do-List for Every Day

When you consider how helpful planning can be in increasing your productivity and performance, it is amazing how few people practice it every single day. And planning is really quite simple to do. All you need is a piece of paper and a pen.

The most sophisticated technology, time management apps are based on the same principle. Making a list is one of the best time management tools you can develop.

Make Your To-Do-Lists a Habit

Always work from a list. When something new comes up, add it to the list before you do it. You can increase your productivity and output by 25% or more from the first day that you begin working consistently from a list.

Make out your list the night before, at the end of the workday. Move everything that you have not yet accomplished onto your list for the coming day and then add everything that you have to do the next day.

When you make out your list the evening or the night before, your subconscious mind works on your list all night long while you sleep. Often you will wake up with great ideas and insights that you can use to get your job done faster and better than you had initially thought.

The more time you take to make written lists of everything you have to do, in advance, the more effective and efficient you will be.

Types of To-Do-Lists

There are different lists that you need for different purposes. First, you should create a master list on which you write down everything you can think of that you want to do sometime in the future. This is the place where you capture every idea that comes to or every new task or responsibility that comes up.  You can then sort out the items later.

Second, you should have a monthly list that you make up at the end of the month for the month ahead. This may contain items transferred from your master list.

Third, you should have a weekly list where you plan your entire week in advance. This is a list that is under construction as you go through the current week.

Finally, you transfer items from your monthly and weekly lists onto your daily list. These are the specific activities that you are going to accomplish that day.

Check Off Your Completed Tasks

As you work through the day, tick off the items on your list as you complete them. This activity gives you a visual picture of accomplishment. It generates a feeling of success and forward motion.  Seeing yourself working progressively through your list motivates and energizes you. It raises your self-esteem and self-respect. Steady, visible progress propels you forward and helps you to overcome procrastination.

Time Management Tools for The Office

One of the great time management tips is to work from a clean desk, and in an organized workspace. Just as an excellent chef cleans up the entire kitchen before and after cooking, you should organize your workspace completely before you begin your work.

1. Organize Your Desktop

Put all of your documents away in the appropriate files, both physical and online.  Keep your computer desktop clean. If you cannot see your screensaver, there is too much on your screen.

Many people believe that they work more effectively in a messy work environment with a cluttered desk.  However, every study that has been done with these people shows that when they are forced to clean up their work environment so that they have only one task in front of them, their productivity doubles and triples, usually overnight.

2. How To Organize Your Desk With Proper Supplies

Get organized and stay organized.  Make sure your office supplies and materials are fully stocked and available at hand.  You will find that nothing is more destructive to efficiency and effectiveness than having to start a job and then stop, and then start again, for lack of proper preparation or supplies.

People who work with cluttered desks, are found to spend an enormous amount of each working day looking for the materials they need among the clutter around them. Psychologically, the sight of a cluttered desk or office provides visual subconscious feedback that reinforces your perception that you are disorganized.  It leads to continuous distraction as your eyes and your attention dart from item to item, and back again.

Time Management Tools for Email

Keep your inbox clean and organized. If you don’t need an email, delete it. Pick a couple times during the day to answer all of your emails at once. Don’t just answer them as they come.

There are some people who are slaves to their email. They have a bell that goes off each time a new message comes in, whatever they are doing they turn immediately to their inbox to check it.

In effect, they “switch tasks” and then return to what it was they were doing, immediately losing momentum, clarity and output on their most important tasks.

You will be much more productive if you set out time to answer all of your emails at once than to answer them each as they come.

Answer All of Your Emails at the Same Time

When answering email, bundle them all together and do them at the same time. Don’t answer them as they come in. Do all your similar tasks at the same time rather than doing a little bit now and a little bit later.

Batching your tasks simply means doing similar things at the same time. There exists a “learning curve” in everything you do. When you complete a series of similar or identical tasks all in a row, the learning curve enables you to reduce the time required to complete each task by as much as 80 percent by the time you complete the fifth identical task.

Keep Your Emails Short and Sweet

You should make a decision not to allow your inbox to control your life, like the tail wagging the dog. Instead, discipline yourself to use your email as a business tool. Make your responses quick and to the point.

If your responses are quick, it will free up more time to get through more emails and make all correspondence easier to read.

Create Email Folders

If you manage multiple email addresses on one account, create a filter and label for each account. This way you will know what emails are personal and which ones are business related. You can save personal messages for later without having to read through them. This will leave you with your more important tasks.

Check Your Email Twice a Day

Manage your email only twice a day or less. Even better, leave your email off on the weekends and spend more time with your family and friends, and in your personal activities.

Check it once in the morning after you have been at work for a few hours, answer any new emails you may have. This will free up your morning for the most important things you have to do for the day.

Check it once more in the late afternoon after lunch. After that, leave it alone until tomorrow and focus on all of the other work that you have to get done.

Some of the most productive people I know have an automatic response to their email. It says something like, “I only answer my email twice a day because of my busy schedule. If you have sent me an email, I will get back to you as soon as I possibly can. If this is an emergency, call this number and speak to this person.”

Time Management Tips to Avoid

It is important that you never trust to luck when you plan a project. Hope is not a strategy. Remember the words of Napoleon, when he was asked if he believed in luck. He said, “Yes, I believe in luck. I believe in bad luck. And I believe that I will always have it, so I plan accordingly.”

There are four main problems in time management. Each of them can be avoided by taking the time to think carefully before embarking on a new project.

1. Not Allowing Enough Time

The first is not allowing enough time to complete a multi-task job. This is the primary reason why projects fail and people’s careers get sidetracked or torpedoed. They hope for the best, trust to luck and don’t allow a sufficient cushion of time to complete every step of the project. As a result, the project fails.

2. Assuming the Best

The second problem is assuming that everything will work out all right.

“Errant assumptions lie at the root of every failure.” – Alex McKenzie

Never assume that everything will work out all right. Assume that you are going to have problems. Allow yourself sufficient time and resources to solve those problems and keep the project on schedule.

3. Rushing at the End

The third problem in time management is when you end up rushing at the end. When you rush to complete a project, because you have run out of time or money, you almost invariably make mistakes and do poor quality work that you have to go back and correct later. It actually takes less time to finish a project correctly if you work at it slowly and steadily and do it properly in the first place.

4. Trying to Do Several Things at Once

The fourth problem in project management is trying to do several things at once, and you ending up doing nothing well. You either take on too much at a time, including too many responsibilities yourself, or you assign too many responsibilities to other people. In either case, various parts of the project fall through the cracks and sometimes all the effort is lost. Do things one at a time, and do each thing well before moving to the next task.

Time Management Prioritization Techniques

The more thought you invest into setting priorities before you begin a task, the faster you will get the important things done. The more important and valuable the task is to you, the more motivated you are to overcome procrastination and launch yourself into the job. Try these prioritization techniques.

“The first law of success is concentration – to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right or to the left.” – William Matthews

Time Management Tool: The ABCDE Method

The ABCDE Method is a powerful priority setting technique that you can use every single day. This technique is so simple and effective that it can make you one of the most efficient and effective people in your field. The ABCDE list is a to-do list on steroids when it comes to learning how to prioritize.

The power of this technique lies in its simplicity because it’s so action oriented.

Here’s how it works: You start with a list of everything you have to do for the coming day. Think on paper. Once you have a list of all of the tasks you must complete, start the ABCDE method.

“A” Items Are Most Important

An A item is defined as something that is very important. This is something that you must do.

This is a task for which there can be serious consequences if you fail to do it. Consequences such as not visiting a key customer or not finishing a report for your boss that she needs for an upcoming board meeting.

These are the frogs of your life.

If you have more than one “A” task, you prioritize these tasks by writing A-1, A-2, A-3, and so on in front of each item. Your A-1 task is your biggest, ugliest frog of all.

“B” Items Only Have Minor Consequences

A B item is defined as a task that you should do. But it only has mild consequences.

These are the tadpoles of your work life. This means that someone may be unhappy or inconvenienced if you don’t do it, but it is nowhere as important as an A task. Returning an unimportant telephone message or reviewing your email would be a B task.

The rule is that you should never do a B task when there is an A task left undone. You should never be distracted by a tadpole when there is a big frog sitting there waiting to be eaten.

“C” Tasks Have No Consequences

A C task is something that would be nice to do, but for which there are no consequences at all, whether you do it or not.

C tasks include phoning a friend, having coffee or lunch with a coworker or completing some personal business during work hours. This sort of activity has no effect at all on your work life.

As a rule, you can never complete a C task when there are B or A tasks left undone.

“D” For Delegate

A D activity is something that you can delegate to someone else.

The rule is that you should delegate everything that you possibly can to other people. This frees up more time for you to engage in your A activities. Your A tasks and their completion, largely determine the entire course of your career.

“E” For Eliminate

An E activity is something that you should eliminate altogether.

After all, you can only get your time under control if you stop doing things that are no longer necessary for you to do.

The key to making this ABCDE Method work is for you to now discipline yourself to start immediately on your “A-1” task. Stay at it until it is complete. Use your willpower to get going on this one job, the single most important task you could possibly be doing.

Eat the whole frog and don’t stop until it’s finished completely.

Spend Your Time On Valuable Activities

Your ability to think through and analyze your worklist to determine your “A-1” task is the springboard to higher levels of accomplishment. It also leads to greater self-esteem, self-respect and personal pride.

When you develop the habit of concentrating on your “A-1,” you will start getting more done than other people around you.

Make a rule for yourself to never do anything that isn’t on your list. If a new task or project comes up, write it down on your list and set a priority for it before you start work on it.

If you react and respond to the nonstop demands on your time, you will quickly lose control of your day.  You end up spending most of your time on activities of low or no value.

Review you work list right now and put an A, B, C, D, or E next to each task or activity. Select your A-1 job or project and begin on it immediately. Discipline yourself to do nothing else until this one job is complete. It will become one of the best time management tools you can use.

Time management behaviors are very much a matter of choice:

You choose to be efficient or you choose to be disorganized. You choose to focus and concentrate on your highest-value tasks, or you choose to spend your time on activities that contribute little value to your life. You choose to be positive or you choose to be negative.

And you are always free to choose your quality of life.

The starting point of overcoming your previous programming, and eliminating the mental blocks to time management, is for you to make a clear, unequivocal decision to become excellent at the way you use your time.

Your aim should be to manage your time so well that people look up to you and use you as a role model for their own work habits.

Here are four mental exercises that you can use to increase productivity and program yourself for peak performance to improve your entire life.

Time Management for Work-Life Balance

Finding work-life balance is hugely important. You must be able to balance your career and your home life. Time management is a great way to better achieve this. Here are four time management tips for work-life balance.

1. Use Positive Affirmations

My first tip is to harness the power of positive affirmations. Positivity will change your quality of life and is the first of these methods for programming your subconscious mind is “positive self-talk,” or the use of positive affirmations.

These are commands that you pass from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind. Positive affirmations are statements that you either say out loud or say to yourself with the emotion and enthusiasm that drives the words into your subconscious mind as new operating instructions.

Begin by repeating this positive affirmation over and over to yourself.

“I am excellent at time management! I am excellent at time management!”

Any command or positive affirmation repeated over and over again in a spirit of faith, acceptance, and belief, will eventually be accepted by your subconscious mind. My favorite time management affirmation is this:

“I use my time well. I use my time well. I use my time well.”

You will then find that your external behaviors will start to reflect your internal programming to improve your work-life balance and quality of life.

2. Use Visualization To Program Your Subconscious Mind

The second technique that you can use to program your subconscious mind is through visualization. Mental pictures most immediately influence your subconscious mind. In self-image psychology, the person you see is the person you will be through positive affirmations. Begin to see yourself as well organized, efficient and effective in time management.

Recall and recreate memories and pictures of yourself when you were performing at your best. Think of a time when you were working efficiently and effectively, and getting through an enormous amount of work. Play this picture of yourself over and over again on the screen of your mind.

3. Relax, And Meditate

The third time management method is simple. First, you sit or lie in a quiet place where you can be completely alone in the silence. Through positive affirmations, imagine yourself going through an important upcoming experience, such as a meeting, a presentation, a negotiation or even a date that would improve your work-life balance and your quality of life.

As you sit or lie completely relaxed, create a picture of the coming event and see it unfolding perfectly in every respect. See yourself as calm, positive, happy and in complete control. See the other people doing and saying exactly what you would want them to do if the situation was perfect.

Here is a simple meditation technique my friend Jack Canfield uses to quiet his mind which is slightly different:

1. Find a quiet place, close your eyes, and focus on slowing down your breathing
2. Repeat an uplifting word or phrase
3. Move into a state of quiet
4. Imagine yourself surrounded by a sphere of light

4. Imagine You Are Excellent At Time Management

The fourth mental technique is to imagine that you are already excellent at time management. Imagine that you have been selected for a role in a movie or stage play.

In this role, you are to act the part of a person who is extremely well organized in every respect. As you go through your daily life, imagine you are an actor who is playing this part, who is already very good at time management. Act as if you are already using your time efficiently and well.

Pretend that you are an expert in personal efficiency and time management. When you pretend that you are excellent in time management, eventually the action, which is under your direct control, will develop the mindset or the belief in your subconscious mind.

People resolve, over and over again, to get serious about time management by focusing, setting better priorities and overcoming procrastination. They intend to get serious about time management sometime, but unfortunately, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Time Management Motivation

For you to develop sufficient desire to develop time management and organizational skills, you must be intensely motivated by the benefits you feel you will enjoy. You must want the results badly enough to overcome the natural inertia that keeps you doing things the same old way.

If everyone agrees that excellent time management is a desirable skill, why is it that so few people can be described as “well organized, effective and efficient?” Over the years, I have found that many people have ideas about time management that are simply not true.

Here is the key: Structure and organize everything that you possibly can.

Think ahead, plan for contingencies, prepare thoroughly, and focus on specific results. Only then can you be completely relaxed and spontaneous when the situation changes.

The better organized you are in the factors that are under your control, the greater freedom and flexibility you have to quickly make changes whenever they are necessary.

Introducing My Brand New Course Power Productivity

If you’re looking for one of the most comprehensive and complete time management courses, I’d like to introduce you to my new time management course, Power Productivity. In this course, you’ll gain the skills to identify your life goals, map out your success, stay productive and eliminate procrastination entirely. And much more.

Learn more about this opportunity by clicking the button below. Do you have any time management tecniques that you swear by? Leave a comment below.

Do you ever feel like you can never get anything done at work? Are there time wasters at work that are killing your productivity that you might not realize?

Your days seem to whiz by in a flurry of activity. But how much are you really getting done? According to recent research, the answer is, not that much. With productivity down, American businesses are looking for the reasons why. What they have found is astounding.

Today’s worker is wasting more time than ever before – and that is cutting deeply into employers’ profits.

When surveyed, the average worker admitted to wasting about three hours of their workday on non-work-related tasks. That’s three times as much time as employers had suspected, costing businesses about $759 billion in wasted salaries every year. But, it gets worse.

According to a report issued by Salary.com this year, about 4% of workers admit to wasting as much as half of their workday doing things that have nothing to do with their jobs. So what are people doing during work hours?

How We Spend Our Time

According to statistics, 64% of workers use the internet for personal use during the workday and 50% make personal phone calls or send texts during office hours. As many as 60% of workers admit to making online purchases when they are supposed to working, and many more play video games.

But, the personal use of time aren’t the only workday wasters impacting businesses. Here are some in-office time wasters that employees report:

• Gossip (42%)
• Social interaction with C-Workers (32%)
• Snacks and Breaks (27%)
• Meetings (23%)
• In-Office Noise Distractions (24%)

How Much Our Time Wasters Cost

None of us have to waste much time to have a real impact on a company’s profits. It makes sense that wasting hours each day is going to cost your employer big bucks. But, what about those small time wasters we rarely think about?

One report estimates that if every employee in the United States wastes a mere 36 seconds per day, the cost is an astronomical $120,484,000 every year! Now, multiply those few seconds by the minutes and hours most of us waste in a single day and you can see how much productivity is being lost in America’s workforce.

How to Break the Distraction Habit

No matter how conscientious you are, we all need to look at the tasks that strip us of the time necessary to get real work done. Here are a few of the most common culprits, along with some simple solutions:

1. Office Gossip

It’s hard not to fall into this trap, but statistics show that gossiping eats away as much as an hour a day in some offices. The easiest solution is to walk away when the gossip starts.

2. Socialization

Limit friendly banter to breaks and lunchtime.

3. Distractions by Noisy Co-Workers

If a noisy co-worker keeps you from being productive, wear noise-cancelling earphones, or ask to have your cubicle moved to another part of the office.

4. The Internet

Unless you need it to get the job done stay off the internet altogether while at work.

5. Email

Sifting through dozens of emails every day can be a real time waster. Instead of reading and responding to every message when it comes in, set aside a time each day to handle non-emergent correspondence. Here’s another tip: only read the most important messages. Skip over the rest.

6. Meetings

If meetings are eating away at your productivity, do your best to eliminate unnecessary ones. If you really aren’t required to be present, skip it. And when you are required to be in the room, do your best not to sidetrack the discussion. Keeping everyone on task can save hours of table time every week.

Snacks and Breaks

Everyone needs a break from time to time, but do your best to limit them to only a few minutes once or twice each day.

It may seem impossible to get through your to-do list in a mere eight-hour workday, but if you are diligent to eliminate these common time eaters, you may discover that your day goes much smoother, and you get a lot more accomplished!

Eliminate these time wasters and see how your productivity improves! Learn how to structure your day at work so you don’t waste any time with my Prioritization Tool.

Happiness and productivity are linked. If life is getting you down, you may need to be more productive. All-too-often people think that busyness is the cause of their stress, when in reality, being more productive may be the answer you’re looking for.

Here are 6 reasons why the more productive you are, the happier you’ll be.

1. Make To-Do Lists

There are a lot of reasons why being more productive will boost your mood. The more you accomplish, the better you will feel about yourself. There is a real freedom in checking off tasks on a to-do list.It makes you feel like you are accomplishing something in life – and you are! Whether the tasks you set are big or small doesn’t matter.

The key is finishing what you set out to do.

Biologically, scratching something off of a to-do list sends a signal to your brain to release a certain amount of dopamine, a natural mood enhancer, into your system.

2.  Set Goals

Second, setting long-term goals and working toward them can give your self-esteem a real boost.

Plus, it gives you something to look forward to. When you have a purpose, you have a reason to jump out of bed in the morning. When you have something to strive for, you will feel more energized and ready to tackle what the day holds.

This will make you feel more centered and ready to meet the challenges of life.

3. Remove Clutter

Next, clutter can make you miserable. The typical American home holds 300,000 items. We simply don’t need most of that stuff, and it is driving us crazy.

From cleaning, sorting and maneuvering around all those belongings, the stuff in your home and office can make you feel trapped. And that can make you feel stressed, overwhelmed, and downright unhappy.

So why does a cluttered home or office make you feel so bad?

Here is what scientists have discovered about unneeded clutter.

Clutter has these negative effects on your life:

• Clutter overstimulates your nervous system.
• Clutter causes all of your senses to work overtime; which can be taxing.
• Clutter refocuses our attention on things that don’t matter.
• Clutter creates feelings of guilt and embarrassment.
• Clutter is frustrating and it makes relaxing impossible.

Organizing your space can initiate mental clarity and lead you to a more productive lifestyle.

Strip away the stuff and you can strip away those negative feelings.

4. Exercise

Be productive by exercising. Exercise gives you more energy and when you use that energy to accomplish your goals, you will feel better about your life.

Taking just 20 minutes every day to exercise can strengthen your body, clear your head, and boost your immune system. Plus, exercise releases mood-enhancing hormones into the body.

But, exercising your body isn’t all you can do to improve your mood. Keep your mind busy too! When you are busy working on a project, you have less time to dwell on negative thoughts and feelings.

Staying busy helps you concentrate on what is good.

5. Manage Your Time

Always have something to do. Having nothing to do to occupy your time can be a bit discouraging.

The more productive your day, the more motivated you will be to get things done and you will manage your time better. Remember, you don’t have to accomplish great things. Simply having something to do is enough.

6. Find Purpose In Your Productivity

Sixth, always have a purpose. Productivity is vital when it comes being happy. But don’t confuse being productive with being busy.

Simply adding more to do to your daily task list can create more stress and frustration in your life, making you miserable.

Being busy means doing more and more things, while being productive means doing something with purpose. Always strive for accomplishing something rather than simply doing more.

True happiness can only be attained when you discover your passions and work toward attaining your goals.

What is it you really want out of life? Do you want to lead a successful life? Once you figure that out, you will have the energy you need to make your dreams a reality.

Thanks for reading and remember, if you want to change your future and be happier, take action and increase your productivity. Leave a comment below, and I’ll be sure to follow up with you.

Organizational skills and time management are essential to your success.

Time management is a choice, how you decide to spend your time is very much up to your own discretion.

We kill time by procrastinating and doing unproductive activities to ignore what is really at hand.

Killing time may work for a few minutes, but it adds up when things need to get done. 

You can increase your productivity and move closer toward your goals just by managing what you are doing and when you are doing it.

The very act of taking a moment to think about your time before you spend it will begin to improve your personal time management and increase productivity immediately.

Why Do We Kill Time?

Why, then, do people choose to kill time? This is quite literally letting time pass you by, instead of taking advantage of it.

Killing time is a vicious cycle. What starts as a short break browsing online, can turn into hours wasted.

It feeds your lack of action and interrupts your workflow.

When you find yourself in one of these situations, scrolling the internet aimlessly, stop for a second and think about what you aren’t accomplishing.

The more you procrastinate, the longer it will take for your task to get done.

Sometimes a task seems so daunting you don’t want to get started.

You come up with random things to do, wasting your time, instead of knocking this one task out. I’ve been there, too.

Want To Stop Killing Time?

The more productive you are, the more motivated you will be to get things done and you will manage your time better.

However, don’t confuse being productive with being busy.

Here are 3 helpful tips to stop wasting time and get your tasks accomplished effectively.

1. Get The Hard Stuff Done First

In my book, Eat that Frog, I talk about eating your “ugliest” frog first.

Tackle the hardest thing on your to-do-list, or the thing that is hanging over your head, and get it done.

It takes discipline to accomplish the hardest task first, but it is a habit that will increase your levels of performance and productivity.

Sometimes you have to ignore how you feel, and just get started.

Nobody wants to start a difficult task, but successful people put their heads down and do it.

2. Make a To-Do List

It is also helpful to get your hardest “to-do” out of the way first thing in the morning because this is often when you are most alert.

After lunch, midday, you’ll be less motivated to get started on a tough project.

Once that’s checked off the list, make a plan for the rest of your day.

I recommend listing items in order of urgency or importance.

Making a to-do list is an effective way to put your organizational skills to work and prioritize tasks to save time.

What should you complete today?

What things can you put off until later?

Even more specifically, what needs to be done before a certain time today?

Start with that item first, and move down the list until you reach the non-urgent list items.

Now that you’ve gotten the ugliest frog out of the way, your list does not seem as difficult to complete.

3. Take Short Breaks

Make sure to set aside time for short mental breaks. I’m talking 10 to 15-minute time blocks.

Scheduling a block of time to relax for a moment is not the same as aimlessly scrolling the internet when you could be getting something done.

Mental breaks are valuable and actually jumpstart your productivity.

Choose something that shifts your mind away from what you are working on for a brief moment.

I usually do this by stepping away from whatever I’m doing.

Close your eyes and be still for a moment.

If that’s not your style, recharge by being social for a couple minutes. Talk to your co-workers about something non-work related.

Just make sure not to interrupt their workflow.

Stop Killing Time!

When you kill time, you are killing your opportunities to do more and be more.

Successful people make the most of each hour of every day, using every moment to their advantage.

Learn to get a handle on what is distracting you from accomplishing your tasks each day.

Remember this:

Effective time management is a habit that can be learned.

It starts with your decision to invest your time into what is important.

Now I’d love to hear from you, so my question today is: How will you take advantage of your time today? Leave a comment below, and I’ll be sure to follow up with you.

We all face problems in our lives. But a crisis is even more difficult to deal with. A crisis is almost always unexpected and unprecedented. And when the crisis is worldwide, it affects more than just ourselves — and trying to stay productive during any crisis seems impossible.

A crisis can make you feel as if everything is out of your control. But that’s not true. No matter what the outside world looks like, there will always be one thing you can control: your dedication to becoming the best possible version of yourself. You’re in control of working hard and focusing on your goals, whether those goals have to do with your business, your personal life, or your mindset.

A crisis situation is a time to adapt, not pause. Use these tips will help you stay productive during any crisis.

1) Don’t Worry About What You Can’t Change

The first step in a challenging situation is to discern what you can and can’t change. If the situation you’re facing is a problem, you’ll be able to find a solution. You can brainstorm, look at alternatives, and then make a decision about what to do.

If the situation is a fact, however, it’s something you can’t change. Many people are upset because they can’t change previous events. But those events are facts. Don’t get upset about facts — that’s just a waste of your energy.

Instead of getting upset for no reason, simply decide to accept the facts you can’t change. If something didn’t work out, choose to learn from it and move on.

Cultivating the ability to respond effectively in less-than-ideal situations will make you a better person.

2) Dare to Step Out of Your Comfort Zone

The greatest enemy of success is your comfort zone. According to a study conducted by Harvard University in 2013, 80% of companies use a business model that’s either completely or partially obsolete. They go out of their way to keep doing things the same way! This approach doesn’t make much sense — your comfort zone is not the place where you’ll find success.

Don’t approach this crisis the same way you normally approach difficulties. Instead, be prepared to come at the situation from a different angle. Consider all the possibilities, including the possibility that you might be wrong.

Your ability to get out of your comfort zone and expand your thinking is hugely important. In fact, this single skill has the potential to change your life.

3) Don’t Let Your Emotions Control Your Behavior

Stay calm and clear as you focus on the future. My book Crunch Point explains the #1 rule in a crisis — staying calm. That probably sounds easier said than done. But luckily, there’s a simple way you can remain calm in any crisis: by asking questions.

Look into the crisis and ask yourself the following questions:

• What happened / what is happening?
• How did it happen?
• When did it happen?
• Where did it happen?
• Who was involved?
• What can I learn from this?
• What can I do about it?

These questions keep you calm, helping your thoughts be clear and rational. And after you think through them, you’ll probably discover that you’re suddenly full of solutions.

4) Look For The Good in Any Situation

Crises, setbacks, and problems are discouraging. But don’t get weighed down by negativity — instead, take your cue from W. Clement Stone and look for the good.

W. Clement Stone was a businessman who lived from 1902 to 2002 and founded Combined Insurance Co. In what seemed like a bizarre move, he trained his employees to say “That’s good” whenever they saw a problem. Then, the employees were supposed to find something specific about the situation that was good.

The strange idea caught on and spread. The result? Stone’s company grew. It became hugely successful. And Stone himself, who had started out as a six-year-old orphan selling newspapers on the street corner, became almost a billionaire.

You can apply this same tactic to your situation to help you succeed. Take a step back, look at the problem and ask yourself, where is the good? Find the good and you’re conquering your problems and getting closer to your goal, one crisis at a time.

5) Continue to Act

Don’t sit and think all day. Don’t watch TV. Don’t procrastinate. This is not the time to do nothing. This is the time to keep moving forward toward your goals.

Discussion is good; planning is good. But don’t get stuck there — be decisive and take action now! Figure out your goals and then ask yourself what actions you can take immediately to help you achieve your most important goals.

Now is the time to take action. Remember, task completion is the key to success. Continue completing tasks and you’ll continue moving forward and upward toward your goals.

Stay Productive in Any Crisis

A crisis is a challenging and unpredictable time. But with these strategies, you can stay productive no matter what’s thrown your way. Choose one of these ideas to implement right now and start moving toward your goals today.

If you want to learn how to identify areas of opportunity and improve your successes, download my Personal Development Plan Template today!

The most successful people got to the point that they’re at after developing certain habits that help them be more productive and positive. These habits set them up to achieve more in life.

And one of the most important habits that I have discovered in my career — something I consider to be a secret weapon — is about eating frogs.

While I know that sounds a little bit strange at first, let me explain what I actually mean and exactly how to “eat that frog” so you, too, can achieve your goals and live your best life.

Eat That Frog: The Origin Story

Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that it is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.

Now that is one interesting inspirational quote.

But don’t worry, you don’t really have to eat a real frog to be successful!

In reality, your “frog” is your biggest, most important task. It is the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it.

So, “eat that frog,” is another way of saying that if you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first.

Discipline yourself to begin immediately and then to persist until the task is complete before you go on to something else.

How to Eat That Frog

The key to reaching high levels of performance and productivity is to develop the lifelong habit of tackling your major task first thing each morning. You must develop the routine of “eating your frog” before you do anything else and without taking too much time to think about it.

This habit is well-adopted among successful people, so much so that I consider it an essential leadership quality for any person who intends to accomplish great things.

Now that you know what a “frog” is and how to identify it, here’s how to, “eat that frog,” in the most pleasant way possible.

Adopt a Positive Attitude

When you have positive experiences, thoughts, and feelings, your body actually reacts by releasing endorphins to your brain. Endorphins make you feel happy, satisfied, and pleasant.

You can develop a craving for endorphins and the feeling of enhanced clarity, confidence, and competence that they deliver.

Pretty soon, you develop a habit of having a positive attitude. You will, at an unconscious level, begin to organize your life in such a way that you are continually starting and completing ever more important tasks and projects. You will actually become addicted, in a very positive sense, to success and contribution, helping you, “eat that frog,” in the most pleasant way possible

Setting short and long-term SMART goals will help you experience this “hooked” feeling. The satisfaction of accomplishing each task triggers the brain’s reward and pleasure system.

Stop Looking for Shortcuts

There are no shortcuts to lasting success.

No matter how many blogs you read, YouTube videos you watch, or podcasts you listen to in an effort to find a quicker path to success, big wins come to those who are patient and take the time to become a master.

Practice is the key to mastering any skill. Fortunately, your mind is like a muscle. It grows stronger and more capable with use. With practice, you can learn any behavior or develop any habit that you consider either desirable or necessary.

Once you put in the effort it takes to eat that frog, you may also soon discover a preference for tackling your most important task first and getting it out of the way. The positive consequences are extremely rewarding!

Eat One Frog at a Time

This is another way of saying that if you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first.

When you try to bite off — or eat — more than you can chew, things become overwhelming and you end up not being able to eat the frog — or stay productive.

While it’s exciting to knock out big tasks and can be helpful to plan ahead, the whole point of eating a frog is to focus on one big task at a time.

To be successful in life, discipline yourself to begin immediately and then to persist until the task is complete before you go on to something else.

Take Action 

Successful, effective people are those who launch directly into their major tasks and then discipline themselves to work steadily and single-mindedly until those tasks are complete.

Failure to execute is one of the biggest problems in organizations today. Many people confuse activity with accomplishment, though. They talk continually, hold endless meetings, and make wonderful plans, but in the final analysis, no one does the job and gets the results required.

For example, if you have ever dreamt of becoming a published author to advance your career, grow your business, or to improve the lives of others, none of those things will happen until you change your desire from a dream to a goal. Even at that point, you still need to take action and start writing immediately to find success.

Your dream and all of those potential benefits will only be able to have lasting results when you finally take action on your thoughts, set the goal, and learn how to write a book.

The same is true with all of the other wonderful ideas that pop into your mind, so be sure to act quickly on such intuition and start with whichever task will help you be the most productive.

Ask yourself, “If I could only get one thing done today, which one would make the biggest difference or get me closest to achieving my goals?”

You Can Eat That Frog

What is your “frog?”

What is the one task that you despise doing but it needs to be done?

What task is going to propel you farther and faster toward overall success?

Once you have chosen your “frog,” make it a habit to wake up every morning and do that task first. In other words: eat that frog!

I have developed simple methods that make it easier to identify your frog and eat it, too. Download my free guide on how to Eat That Frog and start maximizing your time and efforts.

Remember, it doesn’t matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going!

The 80 20 rule is a tried and true principle that can set your life up for success.

You can apply it to any aspect of your life, including at work and home, with fitness and health, relationships, and personal progress.

Today, I will explain what the 80 20 rule is, why it is also called the Pareto Principle, examples of how it is used in real-life situations, and how you can apply it to your life to achieve the success you are looking for.

What is the 80 20 Rule?

The 80 20 rule, otherwise known as the Pareto Principle, is one of the most helpful concepts for life and time management.

The Pareto Principle states that 20 percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results, however, it is not a hard and fast mathematical law. It is a concept. 

The key to following the 80 20 rule is to identify that roughly 20 percent of your actions or most productive tasks lead to the most success. This can apply to any area of your professional and personal life.

History of the Pareto Principle 

In the late 19th century, Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, noticed that 80 percent of the pea pod harvest from his garden came from 20 percent of his pea plants.

Based on Pareto’s observation, he then calculated that 20 percent of the people in Italy owned 80 percent of the country’s wealth. This distribution of wealth is an example of Pareto distribution.

The term Pareto Principle was not coined by Pareto, however, but by Dr. Joseph Juran. In the 1940s, Juran applied Pareto’s observations to his field of operations management. He helped businesses improve production by noting 80 percent of their product defects were caused by only 20 percent of their methods used in production.

So by using this Pareto analysis, he focused on reducing that 20 percent of production problems to increase production quality.

Juran called this strategy the Pareto Principle, and he also made popular the notion that we should focus on the “vital few” and ignore the “trivial many” to have the greatest success. 

Why is the Pareto Principle Important?

Simply put, the Pareto Principle helps you determine which areas to focus your efforts on.

The 80 20 principle helps you decide which resources are the most important for you to use to achieve the greatest efficiency. It helps reduce wasting time, money, supplies, efforts, emotions, energy, and so on.

We all wish we had more time in the day to accomplish the things we want to do. The 80 20 rule helps you weed out what is not important and focus on the 20 percent that will help you achieve the greatest success in the least amount of time.

How Does the 80 20 Rule Work?

It is not uncommon to see people who appear to be busy all day long but seem to accomplish very little. This is almost always because they are busy working on tasks that are of low value while they are procrastinating on the one or two activities that could make a real difference to their companies and to their careers.

The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often the hardest and most complex, but the payoff and rewards for completing them can be tremendous, according to the Pareto analysis.

Before you begin work, always ask yourself, “Is this task in the top 20 percent of my activities or in the bottom 80 percent?”

The rule for this is: Resist the temptation to clear up small things first.

If you choose to start your day working on high-value tasks, you will soon develop the habit of always starting and working on high-value tasks, so start your day by eating a frog first!

Benefits of Using the 80 20 Rule

By applying the 80 20 rule, you can not only hone in on the things that will bring your greatest success but also identify the main causes of problems or lack of progress.

Some additional benefits of using the 80 20 principles in your personal and professional life include:

• Greater productivity
• More effective leadership 
• Increased self-confidence 
• More efficient use of resources
• Better problem-solving skills
• Improved decision-making skills

6 Pareto Principle Examples

To understand how the 80 20 rule works, it often helps to see it in action in real life. Here are six examples of how you can apply the Pareto Principle to different circumstances.

Pareto Principle in Time Management

Being busy is not the same as being productive, according to Pareto’s principle.

Entrepreneurs, small business owners, and self-employed individuals often feel they have to work excessive hours to produce profits and avoid working for someone else.

This type of behavior actually creates a skewed work-life balance that can become unhealthy, lead to burnout, decrease productivity, and even give up on goals that once seemed so important.

To avoid this cycle, it is better to identify the 20 percent of tasks related to creating income that leads to the highest payoff. This includes what pays well now as what will pay off the highest dividends down the road.

With the time you save on your work tasks by using the 80 20 principles, you have more time to devote to personal enrichment, relaxation, exercise, mental health, and relationship building.

Apply the same Pareto analysis to these items. Identify your most important relationships to devote time and energy to and the activities in your personal life that bring you the most happiness and greatest health. Make these your daily priority.

Pareto Principle in Business Management

When you manage a business, team, or project, it is possible that 80 percent of the work that is completed gets done by 20 percent of the people involved.

Use the principles of Pareto analysis to determine who your most productive workers are. Task them with the most important items. Put them in leadership positions so they can teach others the same principles they follow.

Observe and interview these team members. Identify the unique traits, skills, and habits they have that lead to their productivity. Use this knowledge to train other staff members and thus improve the productivity of your entire team.

80 20 Rule in Relationships

The 80 20 rule can apply in a number of different ways to relationships.

You can look at the relationships you have with your group of friends, for example, and decide which 20 percent are the best examples and support to you in becoming the person you want to be. If you spend 80 percent of your downtime with this 20 percent, your personal gains will be greater. 

To apply the Pareto Principle to building a good relationship with your spouse or partner, it may be helpful to understand 80 percent of the problems that couples face are likely caused by a small 20 percent of their actions or behaviors.

In other words, you must identify the root cause or causes (the small 20 percent) of your conflicts, communicate about them, and focus on improving them. This is healthier than getting caught up in the 80 percent of behaviors that are simply minor annoyances and do not matter. 

Pareto Principle in Goal Setting

Thinking about using the Pareto Principle when it comes to goal setting? Smart choice!

Here’s what you should do in order to effectively apply the Pareto Principle to setting SMART goals that will boost your overall productivity.

First, take a piece of paper and write down ten goals. Then ask yourself: If you could only accomplish one of the goals on that list today, which one goal would have the greatest positive impact on your life?

Then pick the second most important goal. What you’ll find is, after you complete this exercise, you will have determined the most important 20 percent of your goals that will help you more than anything else.

You should continue to work at those goals that you’ve chosen as the most valuable of all time.

80 20 Rule in Problem Solving

Problem-solving is an essential skill. You must be able to effectively solve problems, both large and small because they are a natural part of every aspect of our personal and professional lives.

Use these steps and key tools when applying the Pareto Principle to problem-solving. You can even create a Pareto diagram to help you visualize the details of the problem and see the possible solutions:

• Create a list of problems you are facing in your situation.
• Determine what is causing each problem, particularly the root cause.
• Give a score to each problem by listing them in order of importance. Those that are impacting your progress the most are the most important ones (the 20 percent) to solve first.
• Organize your list of problems in groups according to those that have the same causes.
• Add up the scores in each group. The group that has the highest score is your highest priority.
• Start brainstorming solutions to this problem group and take action.

80 20 Rule in Sales

A friend of mine is one of the highest-paid commission professionals in the United States. One of his goals was to double his income over the next three to five years, so he applied the 80 20 rule to his client base.

What he found was that 20 percent of his clients contributed 80 percent of his profits. He also found that the amount of time spent on a high-profit client was pretty much the same amount of time spent on a low-profit client.

In other words, he was dividing his time equally over the number of tasks that he does while only 20 percent of those items contributed to 80 percent of his results.

So he drew a line on his list of clients under those who represented the top 20 percent and then called in other professionals in his industry and very carefully, politely, and strategically handed off the 80 percent of his clients that only represented 20 percent of his business.

He then put together a profile of his top clients and began looking in the marketplace exclusively for the type of client who fit the profile; in other words, one who could become a major profit contributor to his organization, and whom he, in turn, could serve with the level of excellence that his clients were accustomed to. And instead of doubling his income in three to five years, he doubled it in the first year with that one simple time management technique!

How to Apply 80 20 Rule to Any Situation

You can find success in any aspect of your life by using strategic planning and applying the 80 20 rule. And it begins with you dreaming big.

There is nothing that works faster in casting off your own limitations than for you to begin dreaming and fantasizing about the wonderful things that you can become, have, and do.

As a wise man once said, “You must dream big dreams, for only big dreams have the power to move the minds of men.” 

When you begin to dream big dreams, your levels of self-esteem and self-confidence will go up immediately. You will feel more powerful about yourself and your ability to deal with what happens to you. 

The reason so many people accomplish so little is that they never allow themselves to lean back and imagine the kind of life that is possible for them.

Stay focused on what you really want, believe it can happen, learn how to make it happen, and get to work.

Understand the Theory of Constraints

A powerful principle that you can use to dream big dreams and live without limits is contained in what Elihu Goldratt calls the “Theory of Constraints.” This is one of the greatest breakthroughs in modern thinking. 

What Goldratt has found is that in every process, in accomplishing any goal, there is a bottleneck or choke cord that serves as a constraint on the process. 

This constraint then sets the speed at which you achieve any particular goal.

Goldratt found if you concentrate all of your creative energies and attention on alleviating the constraint, you can speed up the process faster than by doing any other single thing.

Let me give you an example. 

Let us say that you want to double your income. What is the critical constraint or the limiting factor that holds you back? 

Well, you know that your income is a direct reward for the quality and quantity of the services you render to your world. Whatever field you are in, if you want to double your income, you simply have to double the quality and quantity of what you do for that income. 

Or, you have to change activities and occupations so that what you are doing is worth twice as much. But you must always ask yourself, “What is the critical constraint that holds me back or sets the speed on how fast I double my income?”

Identify Your Productivity Constraints

Most people can typically identify a few things that stand between their time and their goals. 

Sometimes they are feelings of helplessness. Sometimes they are simply excuses.

So what’s holding you back?  Is it your level of education or skill? Is it your current occupation or job? Is it your current environment or level of health? Is it the situation that you are in today? 

What is setting the speed for you to achieve your goal?

Remember, whatever you have learned, you can unlearn. Whatever situation you have gotten yourself into, you can get yourself out of. If your real goal is to dream big dreams and to live without limits, you can set this as your standard and compare everything that you do against it.

Live Without Limits

To live without limits, apply three Cs: clarity, competence, and concentration.

Clarify Your Desires, Goals, and Vision

Clarity means that you are absolutely clear about who you are, what you want, and where you’re going. 

You write down your goals and you make plans to accomplish them. You set very careful priorities, and you do something every day to move you toward your goals. 

And the more progress you make toward accomplishing things that are important to you, the greater self-confidence and self-belief you have. And then the more convinced you become that there are no limits on what you can achieve.

Having clarity of your desires and a clear vision for your future will help you stay focused on your goals every day. Focusing on your goals daily is actually one of the most important habits of successful people.

Here’s why:

Goal-oriented people tend to have more clarity and more success in life than those who do not set goals regularly. They are also more likely to be interested in productivity techniques, such as the Pareto Principle.

Develop Competence in Your Key Areas

Competence means that you begin to become very, very good in the key result areas of your chosen field. 

You apply the 80 20 rule to everything you do, and you focus on becoming outstanding in the 20 percent of tasks that contribute to 80 percent of your results. 

You dedicate yourself to personal development and continuous learning. You never stop growing. You realize that excellence is a moving target. And you commit yourself to do something every day that enables you to become better and better at doing the most important things in your field.

Concentrate on Your Most Important Thing

Concentration is having the self-discipline to force yourself to focus single-mindedly on one thing — the most important thing — and stay with it until it’s complete.

The two keywords for success have always been focus and concentration.

Focus is knowing exactly what you want to be, have, and do. 

Concentration is persevering, without diversion or distraction, in a straight line toward accomplishing the things that can make a real difference in your life.

When you allow yourself to begin to dream big dreams, creatively abandon the activities that are taking up too much of your time, and focus your inward energies on alleviating your main constraints, you start to feel an incredible sense of power and confidence. 

As you focus on doing what you love to do and becoming excellent in those few areas that can make a real difference in your life, you begin to think in terms of possibilities rather than impossibilities, and you move ever closer toward the realization of your full potential.

Follow the 80 20 Rule on Your Path to Success

The 80 20 rule is a success principle that you can apply to any aspect of your life. By using the Pareto Principle, you focus on the 20 percent of items that help you achieve 80 percent of your success. 

To help you get started on using the 80 20 principle in goal setting — which is the key to success at work and in your personal life — download my free 14-Step Goal Setting Guide.

And remember, The only real limitation on your abilities is the level of your desires. If you want it badly enough, there are no limits on what you can achieve.

Almost every one of us wastes significantly more time than we know. Whatever your occupation, the majority of people prioritize the tasks that relieve the sense of urgency over the duties that are truly the most important.

We also spend a significant amount of time thinking about the big tasks we need to accomplish, usually pushing them aside until we have “more time.”

President Eisenhower said that we are too prone to focus on the important and urgent matters, resulting in reactive behavior based on what needs to be done right now, rather than focusing on the important and non-urgent, which would be the foundation of a more strategic approach based on long-term goals.

We are wasting nearly half of our time on tasks that may not benefit us in the long term. We have to create the opportunity to redirect our time to more valuable work.

While there are no shortcuts for getting important tasks done, there is a strategy to help prevent procrastination: a time management matrix.

What is a time management matrix?

When you’re crammed with tasks at work, it’s easy to lose track of what’s “important” and what’s “urgent.”

These two words are frequently used interchangeably, but there is a significant distinction between them—and this distinction lies at the heart of the time management matrix. This matrix is essentially a method of determining what you should be doing and how to approach your obligations with more awareness.

Prioritizing time spent on urgent tasks is in our nature.

When we are aware that a deadline is approaching, our reactive brain kicks in; we devote all of our attention to completing something just because it is “urgent,” and we are rewarded with a burst of dopamine in exchange.

When it wears off, however, we realize we’ve spent the entire day doing things that aren’t actually important and are later seen as time-wasters.

Stephen Covey, a US educator, and businessman, recognized this “urgency addiction” and developed the Covey time management matrix to help people distinguish between what is important versus what is urgent.

How Does a Time Management Matrix Help?

The time management matrix is based on the basic principle that efficient time management can help us achieve our goals. Success in almost everything involves time management, after all.

While it may seem like there is not enough time in the day to complete everything, there are simple ways to organize your time so it doesn’t feel like you are always running out of it.

The time management matrix can act as a tool to understand your priorities and goals.

It is particularly helpful if you struggle with distractions and time-wasters or if you feel overwhelmed when planning out your tasks.

The time management matrix gives you a structure for your goals, allowing you to focus more on achieving them rather than planning to achieve them. 

By incorporating better time management habits in your personal and professional life, you can reduce your overall stress, produce better work, and even improve your career opportunities.

How to Create Your Own Time Management Matrix

Now that you know how a time management matrix can help you, it’s time to make one for yourself.

Creating a time management matrix is as follows: draw 4 boxes, each containing four words around the left and top sides: Not important, important, urgent, and not urgent. Then, you write your activities into the appropriate cross-section box and take action from there.

Create Your Quadrants

Use the descriptions below to see where each of your particular activities would fall into.

Quadrant I:

Tasks in this quadrant should include important, urgent things that are somewhat rare, and as the name suggests, they’re tasks that require your immediate attention.

With quadrant I tasks, there will almost certainly be instant consequences if you do not complete them within the deadline.

These consequences could be a missed opportunity, a setback at work, or a bad performance review.

Tasks that are important and urgent are frequently referred to as “firefighting.” If your organization has a huge client deadline but the project lead is out sick for a week, you and your team are likely putting all your focus and energy on getting the work done with less guidance than usual. 

Or if a customer calls and they’re ready to buy the biggest deal your company has seen all year, it’s one of those “drop everything you’re doing” critical moments.

Quadrant II:

Quadrant II duties are important, but they aren’t necessarily urgent tasks or may not require immediate attention. If it feels like all your important tasks are also urgent, this might mean you have a backlog of important tasks on your to-do list that have become urgent since you have pushed them off for so long.  

While not urgent, these quadrant ii tasks are significant to your long-term and strategic goals, personally and professionally.

These tasks are the kind that create the most impact. Improving work processes, completing extra training, and relationship-building are all examples of quadrant ii tasks.

If you have the ability, arrange large blocks of undisturbed time to work on urgent, non-important issues. The longer you can stay in a flow state and genuinely focus, the better.

Quadrant III:

Quadrant III duties are those that you should delegate or automate whenever possible. These tasks are urgent, meaning they need to be completed within a deadline, but they are not necessarily critical activities.

For example, your colleague asks you to help them with the PowerPoint presentation they are presenting tomorrow.

Though there is a deadline to this project, it’s not as important to you as it is to them. Rather than taking a significant amount of time out of your day and your tasks to help them step by step with this project, offer your support in checking their work once they feel like it’s ready.

These are the kind of tasks you want to spend as little time as possible on. They can often be counterproductive to your workflow, don’t contribute much to your overall aim, aren’t high on your priority list, and add a layer of fog to your daily life that makes it difficult to see through.

Quadrant IV:

Quadrant IV tasks are neither urgent nor important, thus they are probably not worth your time. Consider quadrant IV as a black hole.

You get dragged in deeper and deeper as you spend more and more time there until you’ve lost all momentum and energy to focus on important things.

The following activities are examples of low-importance or low-urgency activities: Idlily scrolling around social media, watching mindless television, sorting through spam mail, attending meetings that have nothing to do with your job, etc.

I’m sure there are many tasks each of us can name in quadrant IV.

These meaningless tasks feel like a waste of time, and we often feel shame when we spend too much time on them.

Writing them down and seeing them on paper will act as a reminder not to partake in them as often.

Identify Your Priorities

Being able to figure out which tasks go where means understanding your priorities.” The idea of Covey’s time management matrix is to get us to think about whether a task is helping us reach our goals or not.

Reorganize your To-Do list according to the grid above, so you can quickly see which tasks require immediate attention and which are the most critical.

Eliminate Distractions

Once you’ve determined which tasks are genuinely important, the next step is to create more undisturbed time and space to work on them – with uninterrupted and sustained focus.

You’ll want to strategically manage your schedule to ensure you devote the majority of your time to these kinds of tasks.

Consider utilizing time blocking to schedule regular sessions of immersed deep work and to set limits on how much time you allow yourself to spend on low-value, irrelevant things like email management.

Anti-distraction apps are a great help for ensuring you can focus on your important tasks without letting meaningless tasks colonize your time or interrupt you when you’re trying to focus.

They can even help you manage your biggest self-distracting behaviors, like blocking certain websites or limiting your non-work-related browsing each day.

If you want to get better at time management and finally get started moving towards your goals, check out my personal development plan template! This template will help you define the steps you need to take in order to change your life and succeed!

The most successful people all have certain habits in their daily routines. These habits help contribute to their success and can be considered good habits to form for yourself.

As you read about the following daily habits of successful people, think about which habits you can incorporate into your daily routines and thought patterns.

Plan Your Day The Night Before

Planning your day the night before is one of the habits of successful people that I use every day, and it has contributed greatly to my achievements.

You can use this simple life hack to improve your personal and business productivity. It can be applied to anything from getting your daily chores done to planning your work day and reaching your long-term goals.

One of the habits of prosperous people is that they start their day working from to-do lists. Every minute spent in planning saves 10 minutes in execution.

Review Your Goals

Your daily to-do list should always be a reflection of your long-term and short-term goals. If you’re working on your goals every day, you will accomplish them. If you’re not, they are simply good ideas that you may or may not take action on at some point.

This is one of the main reasons most people do not accomplish their goals. While they may be initially motivated to take action when first launching a new goal, the routine is soon lost when the excitement wears off or inevitable roadblocks come up.

However, highly successful people are constant goal-setters and goal achievers.

So the first step to creating a successful routine is to establish your goals if you have not already. Think about what you want to accomplish in your life, both professionally and personally. Create SMART goals that are specific, relevant, and time-bound.

Write your goals down and always have them in a place you can refer to every day, whether that is your journal, a vision board, a goal-setting app, or a document on your computer.

Make Your To-Do List

With your goals in mind, sit down with a piece of paper and write down everything you need to do the coming day.

If for any reason you do not do this in the evenings, it should be the first thing you do every morning. When you write a list you have a track to run on.

Writing a list clarifies your thinking and goals. It also forces you to think at a higher level.

If you start working from to-do lists, you increase your output by 25% each day.

Prioritize Your Tasks

With your list for the day ahead in hand, now it is time to organize your daily routine by ranking your tasks in order of importance.

Work from the 80/20 rule. If you have 10 items on your list of things to do, two will be more important than all of the other items put together. Your most important tasks are the ones that will get you the closest to achieving your goals.

You can also go down your list and answer the question, “If I were to be called out of town for a month, what are the most essential tasks that I must accomplish now?”

Some time ago I was out of the country traveling across 15 countries in 36 days. When I looked at my list of things to do before I left, I had to get the most crucial tasks done, this is also called eating that frog.

Once you identify these most essential tasks, be sure to begin your workday with them before your time is eaten up by all of the other things you must accomplish in your busy day. 

Maintaining the daily habit of prioritizing the tasks that are directly related to your goals will have a huge impact on your prosperity.

Establish a Morning Routine

The way you start your day has a major influence on how the rest of the day will go. While the specific morning routines of successful people vary greatly, the essential part to focus on is developing an effective morning routine of your own.

If you have a habit of hitting the snooze button on the alarm clock too many times, or you wake up with just enough time to wash up, eat a quick bite and run out the door, consider getting up one hour early or even two. You’ll notice a significant difference in your daily routine.

Get Up Early

Starting the day early allows you to get a fresh start on the day. Just as the saying goes, the early bird catches the worm, some of the most productive hours of your day will be in the morning.

There are many benefits to being an early riser, including more time to yourself, more time to exercise and eat a nutritious breakfast, and spending less time in traffic if you plan to leave for work early.

Getting up before 5 a.m. is one of the daily habits of successful people like Apple CEO Tim Cook, Benjamin Franklin, Michelle Obama, and Oprah Winfrey.

Meditate

In the quiet hours of the morning, take time to meditate to gain greater mental clarity throughout the day.

Meditation allows your body to relax and your mind to be calm. When your mind is at ease, you can think more clearly and make better decisions than if you’re in a prolonged state of stress and worry.

Meditation facilitates creative thinking. You can meditate at any time during the day, but adding it to your morning routine puts you on the right path to being able to stay focused, completing your best creative work, and setting yourself up for success.

Fuel Your Body

While a cup of coffee and a piece of toast may be a tempting way to start your day, take the time to add a healthy breakfast to your morning routine.

Not only will a good breakfast fuel your body, but it can boost your mental alertness, problem-solving ability, concentration, and memory.

Breakfast does not have to be big to be effective. A fruit smoothie is packed with vitamins, minerals, and protein. A bowl of fortified cereal with milk will improve your digestion and keep your heart and bones strong and vibrant.

Be sure to add a glass of water to your morning routine. Drinking water carries oxygen to your cells and significantly affects your brain function and energy levels.

Many successful people add exercise to their morning routines. Staying active is an essential aspect of self-care and positive well-being.

Fuel Your Mind

Successful entrepreneurs make a habit of reading. Influential people like Jeff Bullus, Daniel Scocco, and Bill Gates are voracious readers, setting aside time in their daily or morning routines to read books.

Fuel your mind with inspirational content such as daily affirmations, motivational quotes, and uplifting articles. The positive content you choose for the morning pages of your daily reading will set the tone for a positive day.

Include Family Time

People generally measure your love for them by the quality of time you spend with them. While you may not have much time, the time you devote to your family should be meaningful. They are usually, after all, the reason you do all that you do during the day.

Spend time with the people that mean the most to you as part of your morning routine. You might choose to work out with them, eat breakfast together, discuss an inspirational message with each other, or have a conversation.

Follow Good Values

Successful people share a set of core values that include having a positive attitude, prioritizing self-care, taking responsibility for their own path to achievement, and being organized.

While many of us think of material wealth or status as being successful, the most successful people define success differently, based on values, such as being happy, content, and healthy.

Highly successful people value freedom, peace of mind, balance, good friendships and relationships, and personal fulfillment. 

When you spend your time, energy, and focus on these or similar values, you’re more likely to attain real success in life.

Practice Gratitude

Successful people practice gratitude. They do not expect life to hand them success; they make plans and work for it, feeling genuinely grateful for each opportunity they receive and each challenge they experience.

Being thankful is a trait you can cultivate daily with the simple act of writing down three things you’re grateful for each day. Studies show that those who keep a gratitude journal have lower rates of anxiety and depression and experience more joy and satisfaction.

Positive thinking and gratitude go hand in hand. As you build habits of looking on the bright side instead of complaining and counting your blessings instead of listing where you’re falling short, you will naturally cultivate an attitude of gratitude. 

In turn, the more grateful you’re, the easier it will be for your thoughts, words, and actions to be positive.

Share

Sharing with others is also among the habits of successful people. Successful people do not keep their wisdom and knowledge to themselves. Instead, they mentor, counsel, and uplift others so they too can achieve their dreams and goals.

The most successful people understand that victory in life is not a competition: everyone in the world can achieve a high level of success without taking away from the well-being of others. There are enough opportunities to go around for everyone to enjoy fulfillment.

Focus on sharing your talents, time, experience, knowledge, and lessons you have learned along the way with others.

Develop Good Time Management Skills

On a typical day, you have many choices of what to do with your time. And there are not enough hours in the week to do everything you may want to do. Therefore, you need to manage your time wisely to be the most successful.

Know Your Priorities and Focus on Them

Your goals are an offshoot of your priorities. In other words, you should create your life goals based on the things that are most important to you, whether that is being a bestselling author, having a happy family, owning a business, winning a triathlon, or becoming financially independent.

Once you define your priorities, it is essential to protect them. That means not letting distractions or other tasks, events, or endeavors get in the way of what is most important.

That will require you at times to say no to good things so you can focus on even better things. It also means tuning out negative thoughts that can detract you from your path.

Complete the Most Important Daily Task First

Begin your work day on your most important task and focus on it until completion.

Larger projects can often be broken down into several smaller jobs. Organize your jobs in sequential order in a checklist, and then start on your most important project at the top of your list.

Completing the smaller jobs in your project until the entire project is finished is one of the most powerful things that you can use in managing your time. You can increase your productivity by 50% by planning, starting, and completing your most crucial tasks every single day.

Don’t Multitask

Having a busy day and having a successful day are not synonymous. While it may be tempting to think you will save time by doing more than one thing at a time, multitasking actually lowers your productivity. 

you’re not able to give your full attention to one task, so your output tends to be lower quality. Forcing your mind to switch between tasks is also inefficient and leads to mistakes and fatigue. 

Avoid multitasking by giving your full attention to the task at hand. This includes communicating with coworkers, friends, and family members. When you’re in a conversation, be present and give your full attention to the person.

Likewise, give your full attention to the item on your list you’re currently working on. You will find you’re able to check the items off of your list more quickly and of higher quality.

Remove Distractions

Similarly, remove unnecessary distractions from your daily routine and from your life in general. 

Distractions come in many forms, from negative thoughts and time-wasting social media scrolls to chatting with coworkers in the office during work hours to unnecessary conference room meetings to not properly taking care of your health so your energy wanes.

Take time to audit your daily habits to identify the distractions that may be keeping you from achieving the type of and level of success you’re looking for. Have the self-discipline to make the changes you need to remove these distractions and build habits that will catapult you to success.  

Learn From Others

Just as it is important for you to share your knowledge with others, it is also essential to learn from the successes and mistakes of those who have gone before you.

Daily habits of successful people include being lifelong learners.

When you have a task to accomplish, a problem to solve, or a goal to reach, learn all you can through research, observation, and asking questions so you can find the best possible approaches and solutions in an efficient amount of time.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

For each goal you have, chances are someone else has tried to accomplish it. The world is full of wisdom and knowledge that you can learn from to gain an edge on achieving success.

If you want to increase sales in your department, for example, find out what your competitors are doing to gain and retain customers, improve product quality, and market their services.

If need to boost morale among your employees, research effective strategies until you find the ones that pertain most closely to your work environment. 

Observe People Who Inspire You

Imitation is one of the greatest compliments, and imitating the successful habits of people you look up to is a foundational skill that will move you towards your own success.

Think about the people in your life that are most inspiring to you. What is it about them that uplifts you, motivates you, or inspires you? 

Identify those values and then observe how they use these principles in their everyday lives. As you do so, ponder how you can emulate their habits and characteristics and personalize them to your life.

Additionally, analyze the values that are most important to you, and then identify people who have those values. Observe them or read all you can about them to understand what makes them tick and how they are among the ranks of those you consider successful.

Become Familiar With Experts in Your Field

Whether you have been in your career field for a while, or you’re just embarking on a new endeavor, find the individuals who are considered experts in the field.

Chances are they have written books, created podcasts, developed webinars, written blog posts, posted on social media, or authored coursework.

Learn from the experts by taking advantage of these resources. By gleaning the knowledge and wisdom they have gained over time, you can save time, effort, and the disappointment of avoidable mistakes by applying what they have already learned.

Prioritize Self Care

The road to success is a journey, not a final destination. It is a step-by-step, day-by-day process in which you achieve success along the way to reaching your larger goals.

Successful people understand that we do not one day arrive at success and then we have reached our ultimate goal. Instead, we build on each success. Once we have achieved one goal, there is another one to reach for. The more we accomplish toward reaching our true purpose, the more fulfilled we are.

Instead of allowing the drive to overcome your mental and physical health due to stress, worry, or fatigue, take time daily to prioritize self-care.

Eat Healthy

Eating healthy nutritious meals and snacks is key to keeping your body and mind thriving. Fresh fruits and vegetables are packed with the vitamins and minerals your cells need to function. Lean meats, vegetarian protein sources, and whole grains give you essential sources of protein, fiber, and other nutrients to keep your body functioning at its best regardless of your age.

Choose to replace processed foods, fast foods, and too many sweets with healthier choices. While we may not notice the negative effects of unhealthy foods right away, over time they cause problems with memory and increase our risk of diseases. 

Likewise, make healthy choices in the beverages you drink. Drinking water daily is an essential component of optimal health. Many health experts recommend eight glasses a day.

Drink caffeinated and sugary drinks in moderation and opt instead for naturally flavored seltzers, coconut water, milk or nut-based drinks, and other healthy beverages that are high in nutrients and low in sugars and harmful substances.

Exercise and Stay Active

Highly successful people make a habit of staying active. They prioritize exercise instead of putting it off due to being too busy or unmotivated.

This is because of the immense benefits of exercise. Adding physical activity to your daily routine makes you feel better, look better, and function better.

Physical training creates endorphins that naturally calm your mind and body and make you feel happier, more peaceful, and more relaxed. It also increases your mental clarity and ability to focus.

Before, during, and after his time in office, former president Barack Obama made a point of exercising each morning, regardless of where he was. Bill Gates, one of the wealthiest men in the world, is known for running on the treadmill as part of his daily routine and being an avid tennis player.  

Forgive Yourself

Self-care also means being kind to yourself. Often we are our own worst critics, and while we should make a habit of self-evaluation and challenging ourselves to progress and improve, we should not be overly harsh on ourselves.

Mistakes happen. It is a natural part of life. In fact, if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not challenging yourself to grow and progress — which is a mistake.

When you find you have not lived up to your expectations, made an unintentional error, been guilty of procrastination, or any other scenario you’re not pleased with, forgive yourself and move on.

The key is to learn from your experiences and use them as fuel to do better next time and achieve more than what you’re currently doing.

Highly successful people are driven, but they are also patient with themselves and others and know that the most rewarding successes are forged out of difficult circumstances.

Take Breaks

When you’re making your daily to-do list, schedule breaks throughout the day. It is important to allow your mind and your body to have a reprieve from the stress and responsibilities of the day.

A break can be as simple as closing your eyes for five minutes to meditate, taking a walk around the office or your neighborhood, or having a quick conversation with someone you care about.

Even on the busiest of days, you can give yourself a break by listening to calming music while working or an uplifting audiobook on your commute home.

Reduce Stress

Stress is healthy when we are in a life-threatening situation as it gives us the energy and clarity of thought we need to survive.

However, this is different from the daily stress all of us experience. Too much stress can be debilitating and overwhelming and lead to serious health issues and a shortened life span.

To ensure genuine prosperity, reduce the stressors in your life. Take time to think about those things that cause you to feel anxious, worried, angry, or overly tired.

How can you minimize or eliminate these things? Think about delegating tasks to others whenever possible. The freedom it will give you to focus on the things you most enjoy is worth the effort and price of moving those tasks to someone else.

If your workplace environment causes stress, consider which aspects you’re in control of and make necessary changes.

Spend Time With People You Care About

It is can be easy to become consumed with our responsibilities and goals, causing us to neglect to spend time with the people who are the most important to us. 

While life is understandably full and busy, we can still take time each day to let those we love know we care and that they matter.

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, was known for prioritizing his family by eating dinner with them every night and limiting his travel once he had children.

Concentrate on quality of time over quantity of time. When talking with your spouse, child, or loved one, give eye contact, put away your phone, and listen actively to what they are saying.

Take time to laugh and relax with the people you care about. The memories you’re creating and the relationships you’re building are essential components of any success you achieve.

Be a Lifelong Learner

As mentioned earlier, the habits of successful people include continuous learning. Keep up with the trends and developments in your industry so you can have the best chance of continued progress.

Learn something completely new that you’ve never learned before. Challenge yourself to skydive, play the violin, learn a new language, change the oil in your car, or build a boat.

Wherever your interests are, expand your horizons, increase your joy, and build on your successes by pursuing them.

Get Enough Sleep to Be a Successful Person

Starting your day as an early bird means going to bed at a decent time. Many medical professionals recommend most adults get eight hours of sleep a night.

While you’re sleeping, your body and mind are able to recover from the day and refuel for what is coming up. With enough sleep, your mind is more alert, your body more refreshed, and therefore you’re able to be more productive during the day.

However, some people are most productive at night. If you’re a night owl and it works for you, just make sure you do not have to get up early the next day or that you get a nap during the day to make up for your eight hours of sleep.

Establish a Night Routine

Just as having a morning routine is important, so is establishing a healthy nighttime routine. This allows you to wind down from the day, assess what your successes were, reevaluate your goals, focus on your priorities, refuel, and get ready for the next day ahead.

Remember to make your list for tomorrow, too.

Eat Dinner With Your Family

Dinner time is often the perfect time to connect with your family. Spending time with those you love over a meal gives everyone a chance to bond, talk about the day, laugh, share stories, and even discuss important matters in a casual, safe setting.

No matter how busy you get, guard this time and make it a priority. Everyone needs to eat, so take the time to do it together. 

You can also prepare food with your family and do the dishes together. These daily chores are built-in opportunities to spend quality time with those who are most important to your prosperity.

Keep a Daily Journal

Journaling at the end of the day gives you a way to reflect on where you’re and where you want to be. Your journal is personal to you, so what you include in it is a matter of what is most helpful to you.

Along with writing about the things you’re grateful for, it is often helpful to ponder the things you’re happy with and the successes you had during the day. Look at the list you made for the day and check off what you’ve completed so you can have a visual reminder of the progress you’re making.

Write about the thoughts, ideas, or experiences that you want to remember. Going back to your journal entries can often be inspiring during difficult times and it can allow you to chronicle the successes you’re having.

Retire Your Electronics

Studies show that screen time too close to bedtime can make it more difficult to get to sleep. You will also benefit from unplugging and having time away from your electronics.

Choose a time in the evening when you will put your phone away, turn off your computer and other devices, and be free from notifications, calls, texts, and online information.

This time away from your devices will let you be off duty, give you time to decompress, and help you get a good night’s rest so you can be recharged and ready for the next day. 

Follow the Daily Habits of Successful People

Take time today to decide which of these habits of successful people you will incorporate into your life. To help you get started, download my free 14-Step Goal Setting Guide to identify and write goals you can achieve. As you define your goals and develop successful habits, your potential to break through barriers and achieve the best life you’re looking for is limitless.

Every one of us is gifted the same twenty-four hours every day. It’s how you use those hours, though, that makes all the difference in your own productivity.

Work productivity is not the same as being busy or doing as much as possible in a short period of time. In fact, experts define productivity as being actively engaged in meaningful work, whereas the quality of output is equal to or greater than the amount of time spent on it.

Being productive is using your time wisely to create high-quality output while being free of time-wasting distractions or interruptions.

If you are like many people, implementing some key productivity tips and time management techniques may be all that it takes for you to reach new heights in your professional life.

That is why I am sharing my best productivity-boosting tips that are simple enough for you to implement today.

Organize Your Daily Tasks With a To-Do List

One of the most important productivity tips you can adopt is to use to-do lists. I use to-do lists every day, and most highly successful people do as well.

Create a master list with all of the tasks you need to accomplish to reach your goals. You will then base your daily to-do lists on these tasks as well as the daily personal and work-related tasks you need to accomplish.

Whether you keep your “to-do list” in a notebook, on a calendar, or on an app for your phone, writing down the tasks that you need to complete is an excellent way to keep yourself organized and become more productive.

There is simply something about writing down a list of tasks that makes a person more motivated to complete them and scratch them off the list one by one. When a to-do list is in your head it is little more than something to stress over. When a to-do list is written down, though, it becomes a plan of action.

Write Your List the Day Before

Before you end each workday, plan ahead by writing down your to-do list for the next day. Check off the things you accomplished today and determine which of the same tasks or other tasks need to be done tomorrow.

Planning out the next day’s work ahead of time in this manner allows you to prepare your mind for the upcoming work and also enables you to dive right into your to-do list the moment the workday starts.

Alternatively, you can spend a few moments before you go to bed making or reviewing your to-do list. As you sleep, your subconscious mind can actually start working on new ideas and help solve complex problems that will improve productivity throughout the day.

Prioritize Your To-Do List

Once your list is created, rank your items in the order you plan to complete them. Put a number one next to your first task, a two by your next task, and so on until all of your items are ordered.

The timing of some of your tasks will be dictated by items already scheduled for you throughout the day, such as meetings, appointments, a lunch break, and conference calls.

Time management of other items will be up to you, so here is where you will apply important productivity hacks. One of the most crucial productivity strategies I can recommend is to begin your day with your most important tasks first.

Tackle the Most Important Task First

If you are able to complete your most crucial task right out of the gate, you are then able to continue your day knowing that the worst is behind you rather than spending the day stressing about a task you may be dreading.

I call this productivity tip eating that frog. If you eat that frog first thing, the rest of the day can only be better.

Given that stress and worry are the enemies of productivity, tackling the toughest task on your to-do list first-thing is an effective way to become more productive.

Important tasks are those that have a tight deadline and are either due that day or soon after. If each of your tasks has equally important deadlines, the most essential task is the one that will get you closest to achieving your most important life goals.

Your first task of the day might also be one that someone else is waiting for you to complete so they can take the next step in a project or do the next thing on their to-do list.

Group Similar Tasks Together

I also recommend task batching, a time management technique in which you group related tasks together to be completed within the same time frame.

You might group similar tasks by the level of effort they take, the type of actions you need to perform, or by the project.

Task batching increases productivity by minimizing context switching. Context switching is what your brain has to do when you go from one task to another task.

Research reveals that it can take your brain an average of 23 minutes to refocus productively on a task once you are interrupted. That is a lot of time wasted.

The benefits of grouping similar tasks together include deeper work productivity and heightened levels of focus. People who task batch are less stressed, less frustrated, and require a lower mental workload to be productive. This productivity strategy saves the amount of time you spend working on one task and decreases burnout.

Break Up Large Projects Into Bite-Sized Tasks

Having big projects looming over you can feel overwhelming and lead to procrastination. Instead of looking at large projects as ominous, break them into small tasks that you can tackle one at a time.

Start at the beginning and determine what needs to be completed first. Schedule out the remaining tasks so they will all be completed by the deadline. Giving yourself a few days or weeks to complete a large creative project will reduce stress and help you feel productive each day you are checking off the smaller tasks.

Start Early on Your Most Dreaded Task

Just as big projects can throw us into a productivity pit of procrastination, dreaded tasks are even worse. We can tend to put them off for long periods of time, telling ourselves over and over that we’ll do them later.

The problem that arises all too often is we spend more hours worrying about being productive on these tasks than we actually spend completing them. The stress that results lowers our productivity and impacts our mental and physical health.

Instead of putting off tasks you do not want to do, discipline yourself to get them out of the way immediately and challenge yourself even to complete them a day ahead of schedule.

Use the productivity strategy of setting deadlines to your advantage. Few things are more motivating than deadlines, and you can take advantage of this by setting realistic, self-imposed time limits on the tasks you need to complete.

If you are able to treat these time limits with all of the seriousness that you would treat an official deadline, then your productivity is sure to benefit.

Learn to Say ‘No’

Nothing kills your productivity quite like biting off way more than you can chew. Overcommitting to more work than you are actually able to complete leads only to stress and worry — which can make it difficult to complete any work at all.

While you don’t want to sell yourself short on the amount of work you can complete in a given time, you also want to avoid taking on more than you can handle. It’s a fine balance, but an important one to find if you want to be at your most productive.

Protect Your Priorities

So how do you know what to say no to without letting coworkers down, limiting your opportunities at work, or disappointing loved ones?

The key is to know what your priorities are. Your priorities are the things you value most in life and ideally they are directly related to your life goals.

If one of your main goals is to save money for a down payment on a house by the end of the year, and you have determined it will take a certain amount of extra earnings each week to do so, then you must say no to extra requests that pull you away from your income earning goal.

If your goal is to submit your first novel to a publisher in two months, then you must prioritize and devote your most productive hours to writing and ask for the support of family and friends while you focus on the important tasks you need to accomplish.

Take the time to ponder what your priorities are and write them down your priorities. Highly productive people have a clear vision of where they are headed based on their values, and they set and take action daily on goals that will get them there.

Delegate Tasks to Others

Another way to manage your productivity when you have too many tasks or responsibilities is to delegate work to other team members.

Determine which tasks require your specific talents, knowledge, and skills and which can just as easily be completed by others. It may be difficult at first to delegate to others, but both you and your team members can benefit from using this productivity booster.

When you give a responsibility to another person, it gives them the opportunity to learn new skills, form new ideas, and grow their knowledge base. In turn, it allows you to devote your most productive time to the tasks that make the best use of your unique abilities.

Delegating is usually a win-win situation for everyone involved when it is done equitably and strategically.

If you need to pay someone for taking on your work, your increased productivity inevitably makes up for extra money spent on wages and initial time on training.

Stop Multitasking

While multitasking may seem like an easy way to boost your productivity, it tends to end up accomplishing the exact opposite purpose. Any time you split your attention between multiple tasks, both your productivity and the quality of your work are sure to suffer.

Stanford University research shows that not only does multitasking decrease productivity, but it also increases stress, negatively affects your mood, and decreases motivation.

When you multitask, your attention is divided between two or more tasks, never giving full attention or deep thought to one task. This lack of concentration makes it more difficult to process information efficiently or even to fully understand what you are listening to, reading, writing, or doing.

As a result, you are prone to make more mistakes, decreasing your quality of output and costing you precious time and effort correcting errors or worse.

Multitasking also makes it difficult or impossible to remember things because you are never really concentrating on the information in the first place.

Instead of multitasking, give one task your full attention until it is completed before moving on to the next. You will find your productivity and your quality of life both increase.

Recognize Your Productivity Peaks and Valleys

We all have a natural rhythm that determines when we are most alert and therefore most productive.

Many people are at their most productive in the early morning hours. Others, though, may do their best work late at night or in the middle of the afternoon. Determine when you personally are at your most productive and use those hours to their full advantage.

You can use several different techniques to find out if you are a morning person or a night owl, such as productivity tools or tracking your time and activities over a week or month to see what patterns develop.

Chances are, however, you probably know if you prefer to wake up early or stay up late, and you can tell when your energy lags during the day or evening.

Schedule your most intense and analytical tasks during your most productive hours and save menial or mind-numbing things for when your energy and focus usually lag.

Follow a Schedule

Based on your productivity peaks and valleys, create a daily and weekly schedule and follow it. Creating a schedule helps prevent you from wasting time, allows you to set aside time for your most important duties, helps prevent procrastination, and allows you to set realistic expectations of what you can complete during the day.

Many people are most productive when they schedule specific times to make phone calls and answer emails. As these items can tend to cause numerous interruptions throughout the day, it is often best to schedule a block of time in the morning, afternoon, and evening when you will attend to them.

This practice also helps you take advantage of grouping similar items together and avoid the pitfalls of multitasking. Following a regular schedule also helps you establish a routine and create structure and discipline in your life, which are also keys to productivity.

Give Yourself Regular Breaks

When writing your schedule, it is important to add regular breaks throughout the day. Although taking time away from work may seem as though it would make you less productive, breaks actually increase productivity.

If you have a desk job or sit in front of a screen for the majority of your day, getting up to walk around increases blood flow and reenergizes tired muscles.

A break away from your work helps you retain the information you have been concentrating on as well as allow new ideas to flow into your mind.

Make your breaks productive by moving around, rehydrating, or eating a healthy snack. Even a microbreak can be productive. When you find your energy waning or your mind wandering, close your eyes for one minute or stretch for 20 seconds.

Experts have different opinions on how often you should take a break during work, so experiment to find out what works best for you. While some say the most productive people work for about an hour and take a 15-minute break, others suggest working 75 to 90 minutes before resting.

Prioritize Your Health

The healthier you are, the more productive you can be. Healthy individuals are less likely to get sick and have to miss work or suffer from ailments that keep them performing at their best.

Healthy people are generally happier and able to strike a good work-life balance. This means they can devote highly productive focus during work time while looking forward to personal time after hours.

Nurture Your Personal Life

Devoting time to your family and your personal interests improves your mental health. When you are taking the time to nurture relationships with the people who are most important to you, you are less likely to be distracted by worries or feelings of guilt that you are not spending enough time with them.

When you create your daily and weekly schedules, make time for loved ones at meal times, in the morning and evening, and on the weekends when you are away from the office. Do not bring your work home whenever possible. Remember that more time spent working does not equate to productive accomplishments.

Nurture your personal interests as well, such as hobbies and activities you enjoy. Feeling fulfilled outside of work makes it easier for you to be productive when you are on the clock.

Get Regular Physical Exercise

Staying active is also key to being healthy and staying productive. Many people enjoy starting their day with exercise first thing in the morning. It enhances your energy levels, makes you feel calmer during the day, and can improve your ability to focus.

Regular exercise helps you maintain good posture, which is important for your energy levels when sitting at a desk or standing for long periods during the day.

Take Care of Your Mental Health

While small, regular breaks during the day enhance your mental well-being, sometimes longer breaks are needed — like a long weekend off or a full vacation. Be sure to make full use of the vacation days that are built into your benefits. Taking time away from work allows you to feel refreshed, gain a new perspective, and increase your productivity at work.

If you are self-employed, you must give yourself time off regularly as well. It can be tempting to work around the clock when you work from home or at your own place of business. But remember to delegate and to schedule time away so you can be more productive with the time you set aside for building your business as well as enjoy the success you are creating.

Get Enough Sleep

Getting enough sleep is a crucial component of your productivity. When you are sleep deprived, your brain is not able to function at its full capacity. This leads to increased errors and sluggish performance.

Protect your sleeping hours so that you can come to work refreshed and rejuvenated. Sleep experts recommend most adults get at least seven hours of sleep for optimal well-being and health.

Getting enough sleep will restore your brain function and allow you to be fully alert and engaged at work.

Get Rid of Distractions

Today, we live in a world that offers up one interruption and distraction after the other. If you want to be as productive as possible, it’s essential to eliminate as many of these interruptions as possible.

To work efficiently, turn off distractions from your devices that tend to waste time, such as social media and email notifications. Reduce the pop-up notifications on your computer to only the essential, time-sensitive ones.

When needed, close yourself off in a room and – if you are able – leave your phone in another room. Take whatever steps you can to minimize distractions from your environment so that all that is left is you and the work that needs to be completed.

Improving Productivity When Working Remotely

Today, the modern workplace is a home office for many. As such, it takes special skill and attention to create a distraction-free work environment.

Make your family or housemates aware of your work schedule and ask them to minimize interruptions when you are working, choosing instead to talk to you during your breaks.

If you prefer the hubbub of a coffee shop or shared workspace to do your work, be sure the activities of others around you do not keep you from being productive.

Recent research shows that productivity can increase by 77% by working from home since the pandemic as more people discover the value remote work has in boosting productivity and overall well-being.

Use Email Management Tips and Productivity Tools

To reduce the time emails take away from your day, unsubscribe from lists or newsletters you do not read, or send them directly to a folder so they do not crowd your inbox.

Practice the one-minute rule when answering emails to save time: If will take a minute or less to answer an email, do it right away.

Use smartphone apps to organize your daily and weekly tasks. Take advantage of productivity tools that help you manage distractions, organize your calendar, and manage projects.

Keep a Clean Space

A tidy workspace promotes productivity by keeping you organized so you do not waste time trying to find important documents or supplies. Often our environment influences our state of mind as well. When your work area is clean and organized, your mind feels more organized and efficient as well.

Practice the Two Minute Rule

Productivity consultant David Allen created the two-minute rule to increase productivity levels. The rule states that if something takes you less than two minutes, then do it now.

Following this rule decreases procrastination and efficiently checks off more items from your to-do lists. It can take more willpower to force yourself to get things done when it is more tempting to put them off, but doing so will decrease the amount of time you feel stressed or feel overwhelmed from having too much on your plate.

Start Giving Yourself More Time With These Productivity Tips

I hope you will use the productivity strategies to help you increase your success at work as well as personally. Find the ones that work the best for you and begin today to increase your productivity. And to help you get an extra boost, download my free Personal Development Plan Template to help you optimize your success and achieve your goals.