Two big groups of people have problems getting a lot done. One is people with very busy lives. Obviously, if you work ten hours a day and commute another two hours, there isn’t much room for anything else. However, the other group are people with seemingly too much spare time, which often is just a lack of structure. 

When I was working with business owners, freelancers, or even graduate students, they often mentioned that even though usually nobody tells them what to do, and as long as they meet their deadlines, all is fine anyway, they nonetheless often feel as if they waste too much time doing nothing productive. The temptation to grab the newspaper, check up on your friends on Facebook or read a few articles on the Internet, such as this one, is just too great. 

I then ask them how they spend their day, and it often emerges that they get caught up in busywork. Thus, they feel as if they do something useful in the moment, but when they look back, they realize that they haven’t been productive at all. 

An easy solution, even though it may not feel especially easy in the beginning, is to simply cut out distractions. We are often unaware of all the noise around us. Ten years ago radio and television were bad, but this is nothing compared to being held hostage by Facebook, Youtube, Instant Messaging and Email. Every small distraction ruins your concentration. 

Have you ever worked on a difficult problem for maybe an hour, juggling various concepts in your mind, and then gotten disturbed by a phone call? If you are like most people, then a lot of the work you had done was for naught, and you probably needed another 30 minutes, if not more, just to wrap your head around the issue again. 

There is this idea that we have to be available 24/7 and immediately react to calls and emails. However, hardly anything is ever as urgent as it seem. If you put your cell phone on voice mail, and check your email once every few hours, or maybe just once or twice a day, you will free up an incredible amount of mental energy, which will immediately increase your productivity. Once you need a little break from your work, you can call back your business partners, advisors, friends, or lovers, and respond to emails. 

At first you may feel uncomfortable if you put your phone on mute and log out of your email account, but the positive effects will be immediately obvious. Suddenly you’ll get more done in one day than in two or three days previously.