APP = Accountability, Purpose, Priority

These are three things that I’ve found critical to have when trying to get things done. Really, this goes for personal productivity and team productivity.

Accountability - You need to have someone that holds you accountable to doing the things you commit to doing. This could be your spouse, a business partner, a friend, a co-worker, etc. Find someone that will hold you accountable.

Purpose - You have to have a purpose for doing things, and that purpose should be clearly defined and stated/published somewhere. Being reminded often of the purpose for doing something helps to keep you focused.

Priority - How important is something compared to other things you want to do? Without priorities, you’ll flounder and jump from half finished item, to half finished item.

Purpose and Priority are also good ways to evaluate whether or not you should work on something at a given time. It’s easy to let “something cool” or “something new” steal your attention. If the purpose for you doing something is not clear and it doesn’t take priority over other items, don’t work on it.

In trying to really stay focused and get more things done, these are a few of the things I’ve realized I need. I also have a new filing system I’ll share soon, that some of you may find useful as well.

Tags: focus, getting things done, Jesse Kliza, metricz, productivity, time management

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 9:31 pm and is filed under Business, Collaboration, Entrepreneurship, Leadership. 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.