1.

Plan Tomorrow Tonight

The early bird only catches the worm if it plans the night before, says PR strategist
Christina Nicholson. "By filling out my specific planner the night before, I don't feel
rushed or like I have to get to something right away," an approach that some timemanagement experts endorse. Simply having a battle plan is like waking up to find
your work already started. Right away, Nicholson finds, the start of her day has
"already been scheduled for me"by her.
Simply having a battle plan is like waking up to find your work already started.
2. Write A One-Item To-Do List
"This past year, my work became infinitely more complex," says Brigid Schulte,
author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, who now
directs the Better Life Lab at the think tank New America. Her solution? Scrapping
her long, unfinished to-do lists and replacing them with a single daily goal.
"By acknowledging I had limited time, limited bandwidth, and too much to do, and
forcing myself to choose just one thing and getting it done every day, I wound up
accomplishing some of my most important goals," she says.
3. Go For A Stroll
"The more I walk, the more ideas I have," says Ellevest founder and CEO Sallie
Krawcheck, opting for a low-tech productivity approach. "I put on some well-worn
background musicso I only half pay attention to itand go. Sometimes I get only
an idea or two, but sometimes they come fast and furious and Ill stop repeatedly to
write them down."
These impromptu solo brainstorms have proved surprisingly fruitful. "I can come up
with four to eight ideas for newsletter updates, business initiatives, website
improvements, people I should connectyou name itover a four-mile walk."
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4. Know When To Quit
"Some think that stopping work on a project is a failure," says Viv Goldstein, leader
for global innovation acceleration at GE, but backing away when youre no longer
adding value is crucial. "Dont be afraid to stop work," she says. "It creates capacity
to work on things that truly matter and ends up saving time, energy, and
resources."
List six to 10 things that you commit to not do in 2017 because they are keeping
you from focusing on your best work. Think of them as your anti-resolutions.
This includes mental resources that can ebb and flow. Allen Gannett, CEO of the
marketing analytics company TrackMaven, says that just being "willing to switch
between projects to match my mood, I get much more done in a typical day.

"For example, if I'm working on a client presentation and I start to notice my

attention waning," Gannett explains, "I'll go and answers emails for 30 minutes
rather than just sit there pretending to continue working." He hasnt given up for
good, just for the time being. "Usually by the end of that time, I'm ready to dive
back into the presentationand I got a dozen emails done" in the meantime.
5. Do Only Things You Love While Procrastinating
You may think that to truly be productive, you need to stop procrastinating, but it
might be better to embrace it. "I love procrastinating, and I've come to grips with
the fact that I'll never stop procrastinating," confides Tacklebox Accelerator founder
Brian Scordato. "So I make an effort to only do things I love when procrastinating
exercise, [spend] time with friends and family, etc." Thats helped put his less
productive time to better use. It "eliminates the time-wasters we usually
procrastinate with," so you can get back to work without feeling guilty.
6. Automate Scheduling
If many of these tips sound pretty low-tech, count on a futurist to change that. Liz
Alexander relies on a scheduling app to keep her schedule in order. "In an average
week, I probably have a dozen or more people wanting to get onto my calendar. It
used to take three or four emails just to nail down a single appointment," she says.
But after outsourcing that "tedious back-and-forth" to Calendly, Alexander says
shes found more time "to do more revenue-generating work."
7. Shut Up And Listen
We waste inordinate amounts of time just yapping, says writer and designer Lisa
Baird. "Conversations get so much further, so much faster when you close your
mouth, open your ears, deprioritize your own agenda, and truly understand
someone else's."
That matters more as organizations get flatter, says Baird. "Today's consensus
mode of doing business, where everyone has veto power, makes the notion of stop
talking a crucial productivity tool if you want to design or ship anything at all."
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"Stop talking is a crucial productivity tool if you want to design or ship anything at
all."
How? "Ask open-ended questions, but sparingly," she cautions. "Speak just enough
to get the ball rolling, then be quiet. Suffer silently through awkward pauses." Baird
admits that "this may feel a little weird, since most of us view productivity as doing,
doing, doing." But its the most efficient method shes found for "moving from
thought to action," especially on teams.
8. Push The Important Stuff To The Top
"I'm a huge fan of the Boomerang plugin for Gmail," says The Muse cofounder and
CEO Kathryn Minshew. "I use it to schedule emails to disappear out of my inbox and
boomerang back in at a later date, like 7:15 a.m. Tuesday or 5 p.m. Friday'."

MailChimps VP of customer support Jon Smith does something similar by pushing

less urgent but important emails into a small handful of folders, leaving the most
crucial ones marked "unread," and archiving the rest.
This way Smiths top-priority messages stay front and center. "I try to have no more
than 6070 emails in my inbox at any given time," he explains. "Thats the number I
can comfortably process in one sitting, and I try to get through all of my unreadmarked emails by the end of each day."
9. Set "Action Triggers"
Behavioral scientist David Hoffeld prefers "preloaded decisions that link a behavior
with an external reference," which researchers in his field have found can increase
the likelihood of completing a task. These "action triggers" are simple formulas,
Hoffeld explains: "When X happens, I do Y".
While working on his latest book, Hoffeld would decide earlier in the day to do some
writing after putting his kids to bed, and "then when that time came, I simply sat
down and wrote for a few hours," he says. "Preloading this decision and connecting
it to an environmental stimulus enabled me to avoid decision fatigue, and gave me
a boost in productivity."
10. Write A "Stop-Doing" List
"Productivity is really about what you don't do," says Jocelyn K. Glei, author of
Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done.
Glei proposes sitting down and listing six to 10 things "that you commit to not do in
2017 because they are keeping you from focusing on your best work." Think of them
as your anti-resolutions, she suggests"things like not sleeping with your
smartphone in the bedroom, not opening your email first thing when you arrive at
work, or not checking social media before lunch."
Psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic backs her up. He says that "saying no to
irrelevant tasks, or outsourcing them" is the real secret to productivity. "Realize
what you love and do well, and focus on that."