One Simple Tip to Increase Your Productivity

If you're anything like me, you probably have trouble getting motivated to get work done a fair amount of the time. Especially if you work on a computer with all of the distractions of the Internet, or if you work for yourself and don't always have someone else to be directly accountable to. Perhaps once you get started on a project you can make a lot of progress, but you have a lot of trouble initially getting focused on starting something new. Let me share a simple trick that I have used for the last couple of months that has helped me greatly improve my productivity.

First, get out a notebook. The simple, cheap, spiral-bound kind that you can buy for less than a dollar at Wal-Mart. Don't do this on the computer. Get the notebook. Trust me. Open it up to the first page and make several columns: Task, Category, Priority, Scope, Deadline. Give the Task column about half of the page width and split up the rest of the page equally among the other columns. Draw lines down the page to separate the columns.

Then, you go on about about your life. Whenever you think of something that you need to get done, don't interrupt yourself; instead, just write the task down on your list. In the Task column, write down what you need to do. In the Category column, write which of your projects it applies to. Assign it a Priority (High, Medium, or Low) and a Scope (Large, Medium, or Small task). If there's a specific date by which the task absolutely must be complete, write that down too - in the Deadline column.

Then, whenever you finish what you're working on or don't have an immediate plan for what to work on next, just look at your list. See if there's anything you need to get done right now. If not, pick a task by priority, and failing that, by scope (you can accomplish several small tasks quickly, and that will get you set to work on some of your larger tasks).

Most important part: whenever you finish a task, cross it out. Mark out that entire line on the page. Then, in the future, every time you look at the list you will realize just how much more productive you have been lately. When you run out of space on a page, start a new page and copy over any unfinished tasks.

Writing down my tasks and crossing them out like this has helped me get a lot more work done lately, and has helped me feel more satisfied each time I accomplish something. I am confident that it can work for you too.