... to three to five weeks out, for anything that requires you to take any kind of action in the next seven days (travel arrangements, larger project work, and creative development).

The key to any productivity system is to focus on value, not effort.

Instead of focusing on completing as many tasks as possible from your to-do list, focus on the highest-impact actions that will create long-term value.

Take the time to review the coming week's schedule and organize it into large chunks of time, with tasks grouped by importance and urgency.

It will make it easier to manage your work.

Once you have your tasks and reminders written down, start to sort and organize, using these 2 big criteria:

• urgency (how critical a task is for the following week)
• impact (the value a task creates).

This process walks through a list of prompts in different categories, looking for things you're trying to remember and commitments you've made and gets them out onto paper.

It will help you clear your thoughts and get the distractions out of your head.