At the beginning of each day (or better yet, at the end of the day before), designate just three items from your to-do list to accomplish for the day. While this may seem at first as if you won’t get enough done, it will actually have the effect of focussing you intently on the most important upcoming items, thereby improving your productivity.
If you finish the three items you designate, there’s no rule saying you can’t just keep on motoring your way through the rest of your list. And this is likely what’s going to happen, because I think you’ll find that the real benefit of this productivity tip is in the momentum you’ll gain from checking off those three items. Your sense of accomplishment will allow you to get more done than you might have if you’d stared at your entire long list like a deer in the headlights, feeling overwhelmed by your own expectation that you need to get a significant portion of the items checked off in one day.
