Master Your Time: 5 Daily Scheduling Methods to Bring More Focus to Your Day

Find the best calendar app for the job: Beyond Google Calendar and Apple Calendar: The Best Calendar Apps to Manage Your Schedule

The MIT method is all about focusing on what's essential. Rather than writing out a massive to do list and trying to get it all done, determine the 1-3 tasks that are absolutely essential and then relentlessly focus on those tasks during the day. It's not that you never do more than three tasks in a day, but that you don't do anything else until you've completed the three essential tasks.

This is the core topic of Gary Keller and Jay Papasan's book The ONE Thing : "What's the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?"

Once you determine your 1-3 most important tasks, they are scheduled first in your day. You then make progress on essential items before you get bombarded by distractions. You can use this in conjunction with the time blocking method, saving your initial hours for the most important tasks. Email, phone calls, and meetings come later, after you've completed your essential tasks.