Want to Double Your Productivity? Don't Do This.

Maybe you're one of those folks who are extremely efficient at time management. If so, more power to you. If you can run a small business from your iPhone, write a bestseller while driving and still find time to become really good at golf while juggling your toddler with one hand (don't do this!), this isn't for you.

But if you're like most working professionals, time management is an ongoing challenge. You have a lot of goals, but not enough time to commit to them. If you don't have a lot of time but want to accomplish more, I've discovered a trick that can make a real difference for you.

I know there are many theories on productivity. The topic has been chewed up and exhausted.

People do all kinds of wacky stuff in the name of time management. I remember reading the story of a guy who hired someone off Craigslist to help him stay on track. He paid her $8/hour to slap him every time he deviated from his tasks and logged onto Facebook. His productivity went up 4 times.

You don’t have to resort to masochistic techniques to become more productive. The key to productivity is proper goal-setting.

I used to feel overwhelmed by my tasks. I expended more mental and physical energy without any real sense of fulfillment. It was awful.

Then I discovered a simple trick that changed my life.

And it's this...

Never start a work day without an organized list of goals.

Before you do any work, take 10 - 15 minutes to write out your goals and objectives for the day. This isn't a vague to-do list.

Spell out what you hope to accomplish each day.

Use action verbs.

Don’t say “blog post.” Say “Write first draft of blog post on How to Make a Flamin’ Hot Cheetos Costume.”

It doesn’t matter if you do this with a pen and pad or an app. It only matters that you do it. If you want to double your productivity, never start a day without a list of goals.

How to organize your list:

• Organize your list by priority.
•  Organize your list by order of sequence.
•  Organize your list into a series of steps.

Why it works.

The human brain is a goal-setting machine. Research from psychology suggests that people who merely thought about their goals reached them less than 50% of the time. People who wrote goals down and shared progress reports with friends succeeded about 75% of the time.

The mere act of writing down your goals is a motivator. You visualize your goals. You become more focused, thereby increasing your productivity.

Your Return on Energy (ROE) is tied directly to your productivity. The more productive you are the happier you are. Your mental, emotional and physical states improve along with your productivity. The brain understands this and wants to help us get closer to our goals.

Don’t spend major time on minor tasks.

Success is contained in doing high-value work. Many time management “gurus” preach a “small items first” approach. The thinking is that if you tackle the small stuff first you'll feel motivated to do more." Sounds like “busy” work to me. Worse, low-value tasks yield low-value results.

Productivity is not rooted in doing more things, but in doing more of the things that matter.

To be productive, start with the item most likely to yield the highest reward. Don’t spend major time on minor tasks.

Use the 80/20 rule—with one caveat.

One way to find high-value tasks is the Pareto Principle. Nicknamed "the 80/20 rule," Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto originally used this principle to illustrate wealth distribution in Italy in 1896. He showed that roughly 80% of the land in Italy belonged to 20% of the population.

In business, the rule states that 20 percent of your input creates 80 percent of your result. For example, 20 percent of customers create 80 percent of revenue.

But be careful when applying the 80/20 rule. The numbers don't have to be exactly 20 and 80. Maybe it's 70/30 or 60/40 for you. The key lesson here is that the majority of results in life stem from a few minor inputs. Keeping this mind, determine the majority of activities that yield high rewards for you or your company.

Business coach Dave Kaiser recommends a monetary-based framework for thinking of the value of tasks.

Assume that each task takes an hour and costs the following:

• Task A = $500
• Task B = $50
• Task C = $5
• Others = $0

Clearly, the high-value task is A, followed by B. If you had to do each task once every day, Kaiser recommends that you get through Task C quickly and spend most of your time on A and B. You'd have to spend a lot of time on Task C to earn a decent living from it.

Not all who wander are lost.

Your list is your roadmap to success. Without goals, we tend to drift. Goals give you focus.

I wish you boundless energy and fortune on your journey :)

Before you go: Share your favorite productivity tips below.