1. Shift from Not Valuing to Valuing your Time. 

This is an important change to make and when it happens you will never waste another minute! In a dollar sense - this means you are comfortable charging for your lifetime of knowledge, learning and experience - don't allow clients to take this for granted. You have invested a lot of time and energy and in life, we only get one chance with our time - we cannot go back and use the last 10 seconds!

2. Get the most out of your day.

Every now and then ask yourself: "Am I making the best use of my time?" If not, stop what you are doing , re-access what you are doing, and begin working on a project that will allow you better use of your time. If you are 'bogged down' or don't want to start a project, use the ten minute rule: set a timer for 10mins and start your project.  If after 10mins you still aren't in the flow of this project -stop and move onto another project.  If after 10mins you are in the flow of this project, then keep going!

3. Work with goals in mind.

It’s amazing how differently we work when you have goals to work towards. If you don't know what your goals are, stop now and spend some time working out what they may be. Use them as a road map for your daily 'to-do' list! Examples may be professional (project deadline, sales quotas, product development, etc) and personal (health, fitness, family relationship, financial, etc).

4. Handle every e-mail only once.

Use the '3 D' rule of Do it, Delete it or Delegate it. Use day-based folders to keep your inbox on track. Check your emails twice through out the day, and then either respond if that is needed, delete it or place it in the appriorate day-based folder. If you print a copy then use the '3 D' rule, for this as well!

5. Ask some one who is efficient - What their secret is?

Ask the most efficient person you know what their secret is and how did they develop these habits. Then see if it will work for you.  Remember that productivity is a habit, so be prepared to give this new habit time.

6. Don't allow anyone to take your time from you.

Set up boundaries around your time. If you are constantly interrupted with phone calls - think about

forwarding your phone to voice mail, and then bundling your return calls at a certain time.  If you work by appointments and someone is late for an appointment and hasn't contacted you - give them 15 minutes past the appointed time and then move on. It is up to you as to how you allow other people to use your time!

7. Build family and personal time into your day.

We all need to have the support of our family or friends - so make sure you build them into your daily habits. You don't want to get to the end of your working life and realise that you missed out on the closeness and development of your family.

8. Your health is important - isn't it!

Maintain your health and fitness because this is what will help you through in the long run. There are three things that I feel are valuable to us all - they are time [which we are talking about]; knowledge and energy. Take care of your energy and its levels. At the end of the day being overworked and stressed is only going to hamper your health. So take extra care of this - go for a walk, have a massage, spend time with your family, stop, breathe and smell the roses.

9. Dry clean the clutter from your office and home.

Take some time to remove the clutter from your life. The more you simplifier your office or life the more time you will have. Clutter zaps your energy and allows you to waste time on non-valuable tasks. So plug the holes today.

10. Work in your peak performance times.

Schedule demanding tasks to the part of the day that you work best, where your energy levels are at their highest. It maybe first thing in the morning or early afternoon - work out when it is and then see yourself moving ahead.

What are your favourite strategies for being productive?  Feel free to share them with us here and over on our facebook page.

Are you great at knowing what you want to achieve, but not so good at actually pulling your goals out of your head and writing them down? You sorta know what you want to do, but aren't quite sure how to do it. 

Well I want to share with you a simple process that will make this a little easier for you.

First thing is to get clear on what your objectives are for 2012.  Then begin by making a list of the objectives you want to achieve this year.  Be specific and include time-frames for each one. So an example may be:

I want to increase my list size by 10,000 and before September 2012.

From here, the second thing you want to do, is ask yourself: 

a) What are my strategies for achieving these objectives? 

b) What type of programs/services will I be selling to reach my objectives?

Take time to list all of the different strategies you can take to achieve your objectives.  The clearer you are here, the easier the next step will be.  So an example may be:

To develop a value add free offer that will capture peoples names and contact addresses.

To produce high quality content to use in promotional activities

And the final step is to break your strategies down into actionable steps, that you can track.

Your Success Assignment:

Now you know what the steps are to pulling together your Objectives for 2012.  It's up to you to take the time now and write our your objectives (if you haven't done so already).  Make them real for you, and make sure that you feel excited about what you want to achieve. If you don't then you've got the wrong objectives, and I would encourage you to go back through and look at what the best ones are for YOU!

For more accountability, why not join the conversation here or our facebook page, and share with us your 2012 Objectives.