Plan your day the night before – Before I go to bed, I sneak into my home office and write down the 15-20 things I need to accomplish the next day. They vary in size, shape, and scope but once I write them down I know they’re going to get accomplished.

If you wait until 10AM to plan our day, it’s over. Your morning is half over and several small fires have already hit your desk. But if you will take 15 minutes the night before to plan your day, you will get twice as much done, and more importantly, you’ll get the most important things done.

By the way, it doesn’t matter what kind of to-do list you have, as long as you have one. If you walk into your office without a to-do list and time blocked out in your calendar to accomplish them, they won’t happen.

When you take time to write out what you need to accomplish, you’re saying, “My time is valuable and the tasks I need to accomplish are valuable as well.” This will carry over into the kind of work you produce and how you value your time and the time of others.