To focus on your most important work, it is crucial to be able to minimize distractions and interruptions. In my last video, I talked about how trying to remember all of the things you have to do distracts you from what you should be focusing on at the time. Expending all of that mental energy trying to remember makes it difficult to concentrate on anything else.

The first step to eliminating or minimizing this distraction is to do an information dump and get everything out of your head.

If you’ve watched some of my other videos, you know I’m not a big fan of long to-do lists, but this is the one exception. We won’t be using this as a traditional to-do list – this exercise is simply to capture all of the unfinished or incomplete items.

Write down every single thing you can think of that you need to do, whether those items are short-term or long-term, large or small, priorities or not, personal or work-related. Some of these items might be single tasks, while others are larger projects. Don’t worry too much about that. Just get everything down either on paper or electronically.

When you are confident that you have collected everything you can possibly think of and you aren’t missing anything important, your mind will be a bit clearer, and you will be better able to focus on your priorities. You will also be able to use this list as a starting point to create systems to help you capture all of these items in the future.

Contact me if you want help creating systems of your own. For more productivity tips, check out these articles and videos:

• How Posting Checklists Can Help Your Marketing
• How to Auto-Archive Email
• De-Clutter Your Email Inbox
• Publish Content Consistently with an Editorial Calendar
• 3 Things to Do For a Productive New Year
• 5 Tips for Improving Your Email Messages
• Improving Your Email Communication
• Delegating Tasks to Technology
• Do You Have Plans and Goals for the Future?
• Do This Instead of Making New Year’s Resolutions