14 Ways To Dramatically Increase Productivity

Many of us struggle to check everything off our to-do lists.

Harvard lecturer Robert Pozen, in his latest book, "Extreme Productivity," outlines the keys to getting things done. "The key to productivity is to achieve results, get more results, and better quality results," he tells us in an interview.

We're sharing 14 of Pozen's best tips from his book so you can learn how to do exactly that.

Thanks to Dr. Pozen for permission to feature his work. 

Rank your priorities by importance, and allocate time accordingly.

Pozen notes a careful difference between which tasks are high priority, which ones are low priority, and how much time you should allocate between them.

Write down all the things you plan to do and organize by weekly targets, yearly objectives, and long-term career goals. Then rank each task by relative importance. In the most productive scenario, you should be spending more time on the higher-ranked ones, and less time on the lower-ranked ones.

Source: "Extreme Productivity"

Know what results you're looking for, and make a beeline for them.

The number of hours of work you put in doesn’t matter nearly as much as achieving the best possible results. If you determine what your final outcome needs to be, it can help you lay out a more efficient plan on how to get there, which actually frees up time.

Always pause halfway to the end to make sure that you’re on track and, if working with others, that you coordinate approaches. If the end goal seems far away or too daunting, set mini deadlines for yourself to make the work more manageable.

Source: "Extreme Productivity"

Ignore 80 percent of emails and requests you receive during the day.

The amount of time you devote to project has to vary based on the importance of your project. Pozen says that doing B+ work on your low-priority tasks is usually good enough.

There’s no need to put in the extra time and effort and focus on all the minute details on these tasks. Pozen even suggests discarding or ignoring 80 percent of the emails and requests you receive, as 80 percent is typically low priority.

Source: "Extreme Productivity"

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