Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important projects which must be done in order to move our life, our career or our business forward. It’s all too easy to convince ourselves that being busy and being productive are one and the same. Big mistake!

The same holds true for being effective and being efficient. Doing something unimportant well does not make us effective. Requiring a lot of time to finish a project or complete a task doesn’t make the task more important.

Here’s the key question to ask yourself: Am I being productive or am I just being active?

Being Selective Is the Key to Productivity

The two characteristics of high performers are: the ability to separate the urgent from the important, and second, the ability to focus their time and attention on those tasks that will complete important projects or produce the greatest results.

One of the best ways I know of to separate the important from the urgent is to apply the Pareto Principle. Also known as the law of the vital few or the 80/20 Rule, Pareto says the majority of productivity will come from a few select actions or activities.

The stark reality is most of what we do on a daily basis has little impact one way or the other in moving our most important projects forward. Unless we’re very selective in how we structure our day, the important will fall victim to the urgent. We’ll end up majoring on the minors, and what would otherwise be a productive day will be lost.

Being selective and doing less is the path to productivity. Identify those few critical tasks that contribute most to moving your career or your company forward. Schedule time during the day to work on those vital few tasks and don’t allow that time to be affected by trivial things. Hint: most email is trivial and meaningless. So are most phone calls and most office visits.

You have more control of your time than you give yourself credit for. Schedule your priorities. Ask yourself, if I could only accomplish one important thing today, what would it be? Once you make that important decision, schedule time to make it happen. The key to being more productive is doing less.