We want to become way more productive, and as business leaders, we want our teams to achieve as much as humanly possible without burning out. While an online task management system might be worth looking into, it’s not the only opportunity for you to put a system in place.

There are lots of good systems out there

Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a great framework to help you organize your prioritizes and make sure you are spending time on things that matter as you continue to work towards your goals. David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, is another well-known system to help you stay on track and become as productive as you can by helping you stay organized. My book, Act Now! A Daily Action Log for Achieving Your Goals in 90 Days, is an effective resource to help you build the daily routines to keep you on track by maximizing the impact of the actions you take toward achieving your goals.

Whether you choose to use some online version of a tracking system to record your daily tasks or you use a manual process such as writing in a journal or logging your daily To-Do List, the important thing is to stay with the process. The challenge most people have is that for all of these different tools that are available out there, most of you will evaluate them at a surface level but never fully maximize their full capabilities.

Intellectually understand but stop, or fully adopt the principles

[one_half_first]

I find that many people will read about a topic and understand the basic principles at an intellectual level, but never choose to adopt them into their daily practices. Other people choose to adopt the methodologies and get off to a great start, but then for some reason they drop the process in the middle and the initial benefit they got ends that very moment. For people to stay motivated to continue using any process they need to see an ongoing value to them. It needs to be easy for them to use, and it needs to be FUN!

[/one_half_first][one_half_last]

[/one_half_last]

I have used elements of Steven Coveys 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in some of my keynotes and I have even incorporated elements of David Allen’s methodology into some of the Daily Leadership principles that my company teaches to our business clients. Still, people struggle at times implementing what they learned. That is one of the reasons why I wrote the book Act Now!. The feedback that I get from many of the readers is that they actually use the book because it takes these important principles and creates a very easy-to-follow structure that helps them stay on track on a daily basis.

Let’s face it, sticking with the process is most of the battle!

[one_half_first]

If you choose to give the Act Now! methodology a try, everything you need to get started is at DailyActionLog.com. You can download all of the exercises and forms that are found within the book and use them actively beginning immediately, even if you do not have the book. I am sure there are great resources on The 7 Habits or the Getting Things Done websites, too. Experiment and see what works best for you.

If you think an online system is the way for you to go rather than logging your actions and progress on paper, there are certainly many online tools that you can play with. My advice to you is to stick with whatever process you do try. Give it enough time to actually gain the benefit of using it and, certainly before you pay money on expensive software, perfect your habits and your routines with the manual system to prove to you that it is worth investing the money.

[/one_half_first][one_half_last]

[/one_half_last]

I suggest you make a commitment for the next 90 days, stick with it and watch your results soar as you become way more productive than you have in the past.