By Mike Michalowicz

We all want to do more, and do it faster. After all there are only 24 hours in a day and nothing short of a tear or warp in space and time continuum is going to change that. Let’s just fess up. We all want to triple our productivity in the time we have. My tingly business expert spidey sense knows this, and even Amazon.com tells me this is so.  One Amazon search will net you over 40,000 hits! I don’t even want to Google it for fear of breaking the Internet. But seriously, working faster and doing more is the Holy Grail and height of  entrepreneurial excellence for the majority of us. We’re not greedy. We just want to make a boatload of money in the least amount of time so we can use that extra time to make more money.

Productivity Killers

Oddly enough, we want to produce more, and we’re working longer hours, but our productivity is decreasing. We’re working more, doing less. What’s kicking our butts?  The productivity killer seems to be the Internet. Whoa!! What’s wrong with this picture? The Internet is the most amazing productivity platform ever, allowing us to talk, work, learn, and find virtually anything, at any time.

So why is it pouring glue, not oil on the productivity wheels? Well, along with providing us the most efficient workplace of all time, it’s also the most exciting water cooler, break room and time waster of all time. Along with unlimited access to the world, we’ve got unlimited access to sports, movies, stupid pet trick videos, e-mailing, chatting, and just zoning out on stuff. We’re becoming a nation of squirrel brains, distracted by shiny objects or the headline of the next great business article or YouTube video. We’re logging on for 5 seconds to check on an important email from a client and then clicking, clicking, clicking until five hours later we realize we’ve watched an hour of viral videos, know what celebrities are divorcing, marrying and having babies. We’ve learned five new ways to lose weight, have beat our high score on our favorite video game, and have liked every friend’s Facebook status, but we’ve done no work at all.

You think I’m exaggerating? Nielson reports that 65 percent of all streaming content is watched during the work week, between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. And those YouTube videos? Hah! YouTube reports that 2 billion videos are watched each day on their site alone. That’s a lot of lost productivity, especially considering that most watched videos don’t have much if anything to do with business unless your business is cats, puppies, rainbows and friends face-planting into immovable objects.

Taming the Snowball Effect

So just stay off the Internet then, right? That’s what all the productivity books tell you to do: turn off the Internet and turn off your e-mail. Duh. Who needs a book to figure that out? Simple. No Internet, no distractions, work gets done.

The problem is you actually need the Internet to get work done! So shutting down the desktop amusement park isn’t going to work. There’s gotta be a better way. And there is. No expensive software needed either. All you need is a piece of paper, a pen and a highlighter.

Here is what you will need to do:

• Draw a line down the center of your paper, top to bottom about one-quarter of the way in from the edge. This should create two columns on your sheet of paper: a small column to the left, which you’re going to label TYPE, and a second, wider column to the right of that, labeled TASK. Notice that there is no column for “DUE DATE.” That’s because due dates make us rush to the urgent tasks, the stuff with the closest DUE date, but not necessarily the stuff that’s most important.
• In the task column, write down all the tasks you need to accomplish. While you’re doing this if the thought of a new task comes to mind, write it down in the TASK list, right then and there. This is important, because if you try to simply remember the new task, you will either forget it or be distracted from the task at hand by trying to remember what else you need to do.
• Next, once all your tasks are written out, go down the TYPE column and put a dollar sign ($) next to the tasks that will bring you revenue within the next 30 days.
• Last, but not least, go back through the list and put a smiley face next to the items that serve an existing client.

When you look over your columns, you will notice that most of your tasks don’t actually generate revenue or address a client. Those unmarked tasks are the items that you can tackle later. Is this not the coolest thing ever so far?!

Now go through your list and, first, do those items that have both a dollar sign and a smiley face together. This is something you’ll do for a client and that will also bring in revenue for you. Do that task now!

After that, do all the tasks that have smiley faces, followed up by all the ones that have dollar signs. Once you finish all those tasks, you are ready to go on to the naked tasks—the ones with no dollars and no smiley faces.

Oh, and there’s one more thing— the most important thing and the key to why this plan works– when you start working on a new task, use your highlighter to mark it. This way, when you get distracted by a phone call or an e-mail, or someone stopping by to chat and trash talk about the game of the week, you can go right back to your sheet, see what you had highlighted, and get it done. Once you complete a task, put a line through it. It is really gratifying to see items crossed of the list.

Get’r Done

I know it’s hard to resist the urge to log online and check your e-mail every five minutes, or watch the new Justin Bieber video (hey, with almost 500 million views, someone is watching it!), but with this new system you can slip a little, since you’ll be able to get back on track instantly – making money and helping clients.