to be an efficient one.

Spend ten or fifteen minutes, each night before bed, to write down the next day's activities. Then the next day, stick to the plan.

This is especially true if you are an entrepreneur or in a leadership role, as it's often difficult to prioritize your activity and time because you create your own schedule. The question that you need to ask yourself is: "What activities are crucial to my work, my learning and health and spiritual goals?"

I think it's critical to cover all three.  Attention to all three, each day, means you grow in each area, and you devote the time to nurturing each.

Then, as you complete the tasks, check them off. I use a Moleskine, and write the tasks I need to accomplish on the right. I use a drafting stencil to make perfect circles next to my list items. For some reason that adds enjoyment to checking off the items when accomplished.

On the left I take notes regarding the chosen activities. The notes can be whatever you like. Relevant information, admonishments or self motivation, doodles, or whatever.

You're giving yourself feedback that you can refer back to later.

The notes can also be used to jot down issues to pay attention to on the following day. Usually, my notes fill up on the left, during the previous day, before I make my list on the right, for the next day.

It's important to have a place to make a note regarding an issue before it gets stale in your mind. Then, when you make your list, you have the notes to remind you, and you can decide what activity will address the issue best.

I like making my list before I go to bed. That way, the day feels complete, and I can rest my mind. When I wake up, I grab a coffee, and head for my journal, sitting on my desk, and start attacking it.

Over the course of time, this drastically makes your output more efficient, and over the course of years, I believe it can change your life. It keeps work from interfering with your fitness, for example. And your fitness from interfering with work. And at the end of the day, if you've completed your list, you feel productive. If not, just keep knocking off your items, you'll learn and adjust as you go.

It also keeps your day focused on execution. Ideas are great, but activity is the only thing that will make you successful, whatever success means to you. Starting something has tremendous benefits, including curing procrastination:

Spend ten or fifteen minutes, each night before bed, to write down the next day's activities. Then the next day, stick to the plan.

This is especially true if you are an entrepreneur or in a leadership role, as it's often difficult to prioritize your activity and time because you create your own schedule. The question that you need to ask yourself is: "What activities are crucial to my work, my learning and health and spiritual goals?"

I think it's critical to cover all three.  Attention to all three, each day, means you grow in each area, and you devote the time to nurturing each.

Then, as you complete the tasks, check them off. I use a Moleskine, and write the tasks I need to accomplish on the right. I use a drafting stencil to make perfect circles next to my list items. For some reason that adds enjoyment to checking off the items when accomplished.

On the left I take notes regarding the chosen activities. The notes can be whatever you like. Relevant information, admonishments or self motivation, doodles, or whatever.

You're giving yourself feedback that you can refer back to later.

The notes can also be used to jot down issues to pay attention to on the following day. Usually, my notes fill up on the left, during the previous day, before I make my list on the right, for the next day.

It's important to have a place to make a note regarding an issue before it gets stale in your mind. Then, when you make your list, you have the notes to remind you, and you can decide what activity will address the issue best.

I like making my list before I go to bed. That way, the day feels complete, and I can rest my mind. When I wake up, I grab a coffee, and head for my journal, sitting on my desk, and start attacking it.

Over the course of time, this drastically makes your output more efficient, and over the course of years, I believe it can change your life. It keeps work from interfering with your fitness, for example. And your fitness from interfering with work. And at the end of the day, if you've completed your list, you feel productive. If not, just keep knocking off your items, you'll learn and adjust as you go.

It also keeps your day focused on execution. Ideas are great, but activity is the only thing that will make you successful, whatever success means to you. Starting something has tremendous benefits, including curing procrastination.

Another benefit is that you start to learn when to put down your pencil and put on your running shoes for example. It forces you to look at your days for what they are: cycles of limited time, and helps you understand better your own limitations, or even extend them.

The days I have used this method, I'm almost always happier, more content, focused. I know I've worked the plan. The days I have not, I usually feel discontented, and keep thinking about what I could have done, or the things I forgot to do. That's a huge difference in mood.

The difference comes from having a healthy relationship with your work. When the relationship is healthy, work invigorates you instead of exhausting you. You're enabling a positive feedback loop that gives more than it takes, and goals come to you with much less effort.

Workaholics have an unhealthy relationship with their work. They are busy, but not productive. They have an obsession with their work, much in the same way an unfortunate person with an eating disorder is obsessed with food. The work itself becomes an addiction, and they lose sight of the other parts of life that are beneficial, healthy, and productive. The purpose of work should be to enable those other things, and to foster a positive self worth that comes from being productive, and living a balanced life.

I don't think it's good to do this electronically. It's been proven that writing, with a pencil, helps retain information better than anything.