Want To Be More Productive? Make These Six Decisions.

How to approach your schedule, inbox, and more.

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To be more productive, we have to be more intentional.

The more we take ownership of our decisions, the more we get out of them.

With that in mind, here are six simple decisions we can make to become more productive in our life and work.

Decide what matters.

All things are not equally important. That’s why productivity is about priorities.

The first step to increased productivity is to decide what we care about — what’s most important, what do we value, and what impact do we want our effort to create?

The more clearly we understand what matters, the more efficiently we can achieve it.

Decide what you want to accomplish.

There’s a big difference between things we “do” and things we accomplish.

A focus on what we want to accomplish allows us to approach our work in an intentional way and ensure the items on our To-Do list align with our goals and ultimately result in a meaningful Done List.

If we focus on what we need to do without aligning those tasks to what we want to accomplish, we waste time on projects that don’t matter and our productivity suffers.

Decide when YOU want to do things.

Look at your calendar. How many of your meetings, calls, appointments, and projects were scheduled based on when you wanted to do them and how many were scheduled based on when other people wanted to do them?

Whenever possible — and it’s possible way more often than we realize — take control and schedule things at times and in places that make sense for you.

Be the first one to suggest a time and place for a meeting— don’t just wait for the other person to suggest a time that’s best for them.

The more intentional we are with our schedule, the more productive it enables us to be.