This is one tip in a series of techniques to help you take control of your time, feel great about each week, and watch those weeks add up to impressive results. The key to each successful week is two-fold:

1. Identify what would constitute a successful week
2. Make it happen

This tip tackles the second and helps you maintain focus.

Productivity Booster #6: Clear the Decks

Focus and finish is one of the top secrets to peak productivity. Today’s tip addresses one of its enemies – the siren song of other projects. Are there stacks of papers on your floor, desk, or other surface? Books and magazines piled near by? Little lists of things requiring attention? If so, each one is singing its siren song while you are trying to focus. Out of the corner of your eye you see the stack of papers that must be submitted this afternoon. An important thought occurs to you so you stop to add a note to that stack. Before you zero in again, you notice the stack that represents a very important client meeting. Your thoughts wonder to those concerns. Should you stop what you are doing and work on that instead? Finally focused and cruising once again, you notice your To Do list and the clock. Oh dear! Time is flying. What should you do now? Or perhaps the mess just leaves you feeling overwhelmed and frazzled.

Clear the decks for better focus! Put the project stacks in project folders and client stacks in client folders and get them out of sight in a filing cabinet. A simple list of client and project work-in-progress will prevent you from forgetting about them altogether. Shelve the partially read books on the partially read bookshelf. Put the To Do lists in a drawer for reference only once a task is completed.

For some of you, there is a simpler, faster solution: go work somewhere else. Find an empty conference room (preferably without a phone, maybe even without Internet) and don’t get out of your chair until you are done with the task at hand.

Eliminate the siren songs of the work stacked all around you and you will be better able to focus and feel less stressed to boot.