As we start a new year, normally there a number of new priorities and projects about to start. It is normally the perfect time to plan out your year. Here are 5 tips to help you get ahead of the game to maximise your productivity.

1.  Clearly define YOUR goals. If you don’t know what you want and value, you will end up waiting for instructions to live your life and everybody else’s goals will become your priority. Now is the perfect time to sit down and plan your personal and professional goals for 2015 if you haven’t done so already.
2. Plan your year (or 6 monthly if you prefer) and then work backwards. You will always ‘fill your day’….but make sure it is with purposeful things you have set ie every month I want to meet with 5 new customers, 5 existing customers, have a 1 on 1 with 5 staff members, spend 1 day a month on possibility based thinking and so on……That will clearly guide your weekly and daily time management and reduce the amount of reactionary time planning.
3. Start each day with purpose clearly knowing the first three things you will do in order. Don’t get distracted from this with emails, phonecalls etc. Where possible, hold these other things off until after the 1st hour at least of starting to allow you to focus on your priority list first.
4. Have a ‘daily to do list’ that you complete at the end of the day for the following day (with no more than 10 things on it) AND a ‘general to do list’ that you add to when you think of something that may need to get done generally. This way, you make your daily list as realistic and hopefully achievable as possible but don’t miss tracking the important reminders of other things you think of.
5. Do your hardest tasks in the morning and your most ‘routine’ work after lunch in what is traditionally most people’s ‘dead time’.