This doing things for the sake of it mentality is a big disease when it comes to productivity both in your personal life and in the business world in general. It might have worked in the Industrial Age when it came to machines and how much they could produce each hour. It may even have had some credence for people cranking out widgets on the factory floor. But it’s not so good when applied to humans in the Information and Creative age.

When it comes to machines the one thing you can measure about them is their output. They will happily create regardless. But humans can do more, so much more. We can have dreams and goals and aspirations and they can override anything else that we may have to do in our lives. If you’re focusing on achieving that big dream of yours each day, something like the dishes piling up in the sink, or the mail piling up in your letter tray don’t carry the same significance.

Productivity isn’t about doing as much as possible or being always busy. It’s not about filling up all your time or getting things done ad infinitum. It’s about doing the right things in the most efficient way possible so you’re less stressed and have more free time to play with. However without those right things in place – those few goals, dreams and aspirations – it’s all so easy to slip into the busyness mindset.

My current goal is to write a book. As long as I write a couple of pages a day I’m happy with whatever else I get done. What are your goals, and more importantly, are you focusing on them?

Productivity Tips: 10 Clever Ideas For Getting Things Done is an updated and expanded collection of the first ten posts in my popular productivity tips series and is now available to all for free.

Clutter can distract you because not only can it look like a big, ugly mess, but – and this is the key point – it also represents something incomplete that requires your attention. That pile of clothes in the corner of your bedroom is much more than that in your subconscious; it represents something you’re going to have to act on at some point. You’re eventually going to have to put them in the laundry basket, wash them, etc. otherwise you’ll have no clothes to wear (your brain may nag at you but it does care). Every time you walk past the pile, those thoughts will be there in your mind.

But so what? There are billions of people who survive and function without stressing about a bit of clutter around the house. And sure, perhaps one or two instances of clutter aren’t such a big deal, but imagine if your entire home is full of clutter, or your office has paperwork lying around everywhere when you’re tying to read a report, or maybe your work desk is cluttered up with stationary when you’re trying to concentrate on your emails.

Our minds like order and structure so clutter is naturally a big distraction. Every little thing that is out of place takes up a little bit of your mind. As David Allen likes to say, it has a piece of you. If you’re sat at your desk and it has a pile of pens strewn over it, a load of paperwork that should have been piled away or shredded ages ago and – oh dear – an empty bowl of cereal from your breakfast yesterday that you haven’t cleaned up yet, it’s easy to see the difficulties in trying to work in that environment. While you’re typing away on the computer, a part of your brain is subtly nagging at you to put those pens back in the drawer.

The simple answer to all this is to clear the decks. The next time you start some work, look around your direct environment and identify any loose ends or clutter. Deal with those first and foremost so that when you’re sat on your computer, in the office or whatever, and wanting to work, the only thing that should be taking up your energy is what’s directly in front of you.

Productivity Tips: 10 Clever Ideas For Getting Things Done is an updated and expanded collection of the first ten posts in my popular productivity tips series and is now available to all for free.

One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard about this approach is that nothing really gets done. If all you’re doing is little steps, you’re just basically tip-toeing around the work and not getting anything substantial completed. Understandable critique, but don’t mistake procrastinating on something with taking clearly defined mini-strides towards completing your work.

It’s important to realize that when you break your work down like this you make it much more appealing to do. With a large, time consuming task like my decorating work or the big writing projects I’m currently doing, you’re going to feel resistance. It’s only natural. Faced with the prospect of doing my book for the next couple of years it’s no wonder I spent so long fluffing it. But then I shifted my focus to doing just one page at a time.

Sure, in and of itself it’s not much, but because it’s so much easier to do and so much appealing I can gladly do it everyday. Over a month that’s a decent number of pages. Over a year… well that’s a potential book done. Compare that to trying to do a large bulk of something in one sitting. Finding the time and energy to commit to a task like that on a regular basis is far from easy. Small steps taken regularly create more results than big steps taken occasionally.

Productivity Tips: 10 Clever Ideas For Getting Things Done is an updated and expanded collection of the first ten posts in my popular productivity tips series and is now available to all for free.

Working through your to-do list is just like anything else. If there is little (or no) motivation there, you’re going to resist doing it. Thus, when faced with a to-do list of pure crap, it’s like trying to bash your way through a brick wall. But, surely there is a way around this? The answer is to build up momentum. Once you start cranking out a few widgets, completing some tasks on your to-do list or responding to several emails in your inbox, you’ll get some momentum behind you and before you know it, you’ll be on a roll.

When you are struggling to start work, doing something or anything to get a bit of momentum built up is often the way to go. Trimming and prioritizing your work will only get you so far if the work you’re doing is stuff you don’t actually want to be doing in the first place. People often say shifting your focus like this is just procrastinating and avoiding the real work you need to do, but if it gives you the momentum you need to face these tasks, what’s the problem?

Productivity Tips: 10 Clever Ideas For Getting Things Done is an updated and expanded collection of the first ten posts in my popular productivity tips series and is now available to all for free.

However, this proves why there can never be a definitive way of doing things. Not many productivity books will say this but sometimes it’s useful and better to actually just start. Skip the preparation and do something – anything – on the project. Planning beforehand is certainly important because if done properly it means you get the actual work done much more smoothly (whenever I skip the preparatory notes before writing up a blog post it usually takes twice as long to do).

However, planning can also quickly become an over-indulgent pastime and it can often be beneficial to just get on with it. Ever used the preparation stage of work as an excuse to procrastinate on actually doing it? Preparation makes things a hell of a lot easier but it doesn’t necessarily move a project forwardm and how much can you really figure out from just planning? The trick is to get the balance right. Realize when your preparation has served its purpose and just start the work! It’s one thing to know how do to something, it’s quite another to actually do it.

Productivity Tips: 10 Clever Ideas For Getting Things Done is an updated and expanded collection of the first ten posts in my popular productivity tips series and is now available to all for free.

Hopefully you’ll tick it off. That’s right, a nice big tick. Of maybe if you’re feeling adventurous you might put a cross. I personally choose to be particularly rebellious and completely scribble out the task (nothing is more final and screams, “I’ve finished it!” than a load of scribble). Ticking something off as complete is the simplest and easiest motivational tool you could ever do. Make sure that whatever system you have allows you to do this. If it’s paper based make sure there is a nice, big tick box you can use. If it’s software based, a massive fireworks and fanfare animation when you finish a task would really get the point across. Just a little suggestion for all you developers there.

When you are on a roll there is nothing quite like breaking down a big list of tasks and ticking them off one by one. But, you can also be a little sneaky with it. There is no reason why you can’t add something you’ve just done to your list, in hindsight, just so you can tick it off. Is it cheating? Well, I won’t tell if you don’t…

Productivity Tips: 10 Clever Ideas For Getting Things Done is an updated and expanded collection of the first ten posts in my popular productivity tips series and is now available to all for free.

We all have stuff that needs to be done on particular dates at particular times. They are usually delegated to us (attending a meeting) or forced onto us by outside influences (visiting a sick relative, seeing the dentist). It makes sense that we have some of way of tracking these tasks, whether it be in a day planner, calendar or diary. However, it’s important not to succumb to the traditional habits for these tools and use them to plan how you would like the day to go.

It’s all well and good putting down that you want to do projects A, B and C on a particular day but they will invariably be mixed in with stuff that definitely needs to happen on that day. If you fail to do those projects the tool starts to become unreliable with tasks that you keep putting off clouding the hand landscape of tasks that you need to do. Don’t lose sight of what a calendar is for. It should be used to provide crucial information, not be a (poor) motivational tool to get tasks done.

Productivity Tips: 10 Clever Ideas For Getting Things Done is an updated and expanded collection of the first ten posts in my popular productivity tips series and is now available to all for free.

Firstly, while it seems like many people would rather spend all their time tweaking and playing around with their latest system, when it really matters we just want to be able to get stuff done quickly. We don’t want to spend several minutes (yes, even that small a timescale matters here) working through a system to get to our list of projects or tick a task off as complete. As David Allen of GTD fame says, if it takes more than a couple of seconds to do something you simply won’t do it.

Secondly, the system must not have more features or complications than it needs. If you don’t need that fancy little menu on your productivity software than it’s merely bloat. Most likely you will feel compelled to use it because it’s there, and even if you resist the temptation it’s still a distraction. I find Moleskines are a good example of this. If the fine quality of them helps your productivity then that’s great, but it certainly doesn’t help me. That quality and expense gets in the way. To be fully productive I need to be able to scribble, doodle and rip pages out as I please. I don’t want to feel guilty for desecrating a Moleskine, so a cheap notepad that won’t fall apart is more than ideal for my needs.

Your system needs to be as painless and intuitive as possible. It should act as the thin organizational veneer between yourself and your workload. My weekly planner is a good example of this. Though flicking through a few pages to get to what I want was quick, it was even quicker to have all that information condensed onto one page.

Productivity Tips: 10 Clever Ideas For Getting Things Done is an updated and expanded collection of the first ten posts in my popular productivity tips series and is now available to all for free.

It’s critical that you be proactive in dealing with these obstacles. You could try and ignore them, work around them or just half-heartedly brush them aside, but that very rarely works. It means you have to put more effort in, the problems will linger on your mind and they will have other knock-on effects. A nice analogy to explain it would be a train struck because of a landslide on the tracks. You could move the odd rock here and there to try and let the train through but it’s likely to be a massive chore where the train goes nowhere fast. Alternatively, you can get your team to focus hard on clearing the track properly for a few hours. It might take a little longer, but once it’s done, it’s really done, and the rest of your journey will be smooth and easy.

Apply that analogy to a project that has been stalled by some obstacle (maybe new software hasn’t installed properly, your team doesn’t have the necessary knowledge, or you are having financial difficulties). Would you rather try and push through, or put some time aside to really deal with it? Sure, it might feel wrong dropping what your doing to deal with a problem that probably won’t move your project forward, but think about the long term benefits. It’s easier to be productive when the path before you is clear.

Productivity Tips: 10 Clever Ideas For Getting Things Done is an updated and expanded collection of the first ten posts in my popular productivity tips series and is now available to all for free.

At what point have you crossed the finishing line? If you are not clear about where the finishing line is, you will end up floating around, putting in more effort than is necessary, focusing too much on a task or even just doing completely pointless work. Completion of a project might seem obvious. If it’s done it’s done right? Well, unfortunately, most of the time it’s just not that simple. If I need to ring Jack to get the sales figures, that task isn’t complete until the full sales figures are in my hands, regardless of how many calls it takes. Once it’s done I can move on mentally and physically.

A next action or task can have its completion point defined in two ways. Firstly, you can set a simple time limit. For instance, you could say you will work on a website for thirty minutes. If you don’t set a time, how long will you be fiddling with the design before you call it a day? Alternatively, and most commonly, you can set a physical step. If you are writing a report, the finishing point could be when you have written three pages. If you don’t define that, how long would you be dithering on the report before you decide to stop?

Productivity Tips: 10 Clever Ideas For Getting Things Done is an updated and expanded collection of the first ten posts in my popular productivity tips series and is now available to all for free.