You have too much to do. Some days you feel productive, others leave you with too little to show for all of your time. Why can’t you be one of those super productive people who chunks through tasks and goes home at 5:00?

You can if you practice four simple skills.

1. Choose

To join the ranks of the super productive, or even just the very productive, you have to know what you are trying to accomplish at any given moment. I’m not talking about major goals here, I’m talking about what will be different at the end of the next hour or quarter of an hour or even five minutes. What, specifically, is the next outcome you must achieve? How will you know when you are finished? Without clarity, you are wandering and, while it might be interesting, even fun, wandering is rarely productive.  You don’t want to just ”work on something for awhile.” Choose a specific destination and you will reach it faster.

The importance of Choosing does not depend on the type of task. Whether you are writing a proposal, running a meeting, or developing products, you will be most productive if you know exactly what success looks like each step of the way. What is the purpose of the proposal, what are the most important points, and which one are you working on right now? What decisions, plans, or problems will be resolved by your meeting and how will you get to each? What do you need from whom to get things moving?

While the main intent of Choosing is to allow you to focus on clear, specific, and immediate actions that represent real progress, the flip side of Choosing forces you to decide what you are not going to do. Multi-tasking is not effective. No matter how seamlessly you seem to be able to switch topics, you have only one brain and those transitions either reduce your depth of thinking or your speed. I remember when my first child was a born. My brother was amazed that I could continue our conversation, even finish sentences many minutes after I started, despite repeated interruptions. Amazing? Maybe. But those conversations took all morning!

The first step to super productivity is to choose clear outcomes for every day, hour, quarter hour, and sometimes, even the next minute. Specificity creates clarity and clarity creates speed.

2. Start

Intentional starts are the second step to super productivity. “I am starting X right now and doing only X for the next 30 minutes unless I finish before then.”

You may think you do this, but more often than not, people don’tstart, they wander in. Perhaps you feel compelled to check for messages first. That’s when you see a draft and decide to finish it quickly. Or you remember a phone call you need to return. Then you figure you may as well check Facebook too before diving into your task. When you open your browser, your default home page pops up with breaking news. Next thing you know, half an hour or more has slipped by and you still haven’t started.

Wandering in, by the way, is the only option if you didn’t consciouslychoose an end point as described above. Without a clear next outcome, you are liable to start down two or three paths simultaneously. You may even devote a significant amount of time to “doing stuff” before you realize it isn’t what you need. This is busyness, not progress or productivity.

Conscious, intentional starts coupled with explicit next outcomes get you half the way to super productivity.

3. Focus 

Once you know what you are trying to accomplish and have begun with clear intention, the next step is to focus! Keep at it until you are finished. To do this, you must prevent interruptions and distractions.

Close the door. Hang out a do-not-disturb sign.  Forward your phone to voice mail. Turn off the sounds and notifications on your electronic devices. If you protect yourself from all distractions for 20, 30, 60, however many minutes you need, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish.

But you must also protect yourself from yourself! Clear the decks so you aren’t distracted by other projects, half written emails, open documents, and notes stacked on your desk. Remove all of these from your peripheral vision and computer screen to eliminate distractions and maximize focus. If you need to check for an email relevant to your task, say out loud, “I need to see what Joe said in his last email and I will look at nothing else!” If you need to look up something on the web, do likewise. Don’t wander into the web or your inbox!

And don’t interrupt yourself! Force yourself to forget about all texts, messages, and Facebook posts until you finish your task. People have become so accustomed to constant communication that they often interrupt themselves to check for communication more often than they are interrupted by others. Focus, focus, focus! Don’t let yourself do anything else until the time expires or you reach the finish line of your task. At first, you may find 20, 30, or 60 minutes an astoundingly long time to go without checking for messages. If so, you definitely need to practice focusing!

4. Finish

How often do you get most of the way there and decide to take a break, do something else, and finish the task later? Maybe you want to let your thoughts perk or clear your head or just eat lunch. Don’t do it!

Choose, start, focus, and then finish! Really finish. Hit the send button. Print the document. Submit the request. Don’t stop until you cross that finish line. Don’t let yourself stop short and plan to review and finish later. Later you’ll have to ramp up and get back into things. More often than not, that last review doubles the total time spent on the task while adding little value. No one but you is likely to appreciate the difference between the ultimate and penultimate outcomes. Unless the risk of failure is high or you are too emotional to think clearly, be done!

Choose, Start, Focus, Finish. Make this your mantra. Practice them religiously. These four skills are simple, but they are not easy. Choose, Start, Focus, Finish, and watch your productivity soar!

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com on October 11th, 2015.