Three Questions for High Productivity

1. Keep asking yourself, "What are my highest-value activities?" What are the things you do that contribute the greatest value to your work? 

2. Ask yourself, "Why am I in this role?" What exactly have you been hired to accomplish in terms of measurable results? 

3. And keep asking, "What is the most valuable use of my time right now?" This is the key question in time and personal management. You should ask and answer this question every hour of every day. Whatever your answer, you should be working on this task most of the time, if not all the time. 

Once you have thought through your work and decided on your most valuable task, you must discipline yourself to start it immediately and stay with it until it is complete.

When you concentrate single-mindedly on a single task, without diversion or distraction, you get it done far faster than if you start and stop and then come back to the task and pick it up again. You can reduce the amount of time you spend on a major task by as much as 80 percent simply by refusing to do anything else until that task is complete.

- From Focal Point by Brian Tracy