Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about personal productivity and about a variety of successful people. I’ve read about tickler files, and folder systems, notebooks vs. day planners and so on. The common thread, and the very reason for all these systems, is to get work done. I’ve got to admit that I’ve caught myself spending more time on organizing my tasks than actually doing them because I got caught up in trying to find “the best approach.” J. Paul Getty complained that too many executives confused activity with productivity. They substituted reports for action, but he preferred action to reports. This is not to say that he advocated thoughtless action. No, his point was to follow careful thought with quick, decisive action.

Here’s what I’ve gleaned from all these books. The number one key to getting more done is simply to consistently take action. Try this: without delay, and for the next hour, act on everything you can do right now that’s on your to-do list. When you get tired, slow down or take a rest. As soon as you can breathe again, get moving. Get stuff out of your head and out of the way and simply put your self in motion. How simple is that?

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Life Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.