Most of the time I waste during a day is spent trying to figure out what to do. It came to me that productivity isn’t really that complicated, it’s just a function of making goals and following through on them. Today’s tip might not actually take six minutes, but its a compelling title nonetheless.

Goal Roll Call

First things first, pick an overall goal for your day. Maybe you want to finish that report for your boss, or get a blog post written, or maybe just finish watching all the N*Sync Karaoke videos on YouTube. Whatever it is, write it down. This goal is your anchor for the day.

The problem is that most people stop here. Sure, it’s easy to say, “I want to watch all the N*Sync videos on the web” but how are you going to do it? When you make a long term goal without validating it, things tend to fall apart quickly. Next thing you know, you’re watching the Numa Numa dance for the 50th time and your dream of N*Sync glory has died on the vine.

Establish Requirements

After you establish your goal, the second step is to create a list of requirements to complete that goal. Lets look at our N*Sync example.

Anchor: Watch all the N*Sync videos on YouTube.

Requirements:

A list of videos you need to watch.
A medium to watch those videos.

Your requirements are those things that are absolutely necessary for you to complete your task. In and of themselves, they are just as useless as the anchor. However, at least they are a quick way to get you to think about what you are actually trying to accomplish. Getting your research done ahead of time also means that you don’t waste time being surprised by the scope of your project later on.

Create a Timeline

Take all of your requirements and abstract them over your day. If you need to write three blog posts, your tasks would be to complete one post by 1PM another by 5PM and the third by 9PM. In the case of our N*Sync example.

Anchor: Watch all the N*Sync videos on YouTube.

Requirements:

This is a fairly simple example, but it illustrates the point. Now you have a goal and exactly what you need to do in order to accomplish that goal. My advice is to keep your timelines abstract enough to adapt to changing priorities, but clear enough to act as an actionable list.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Todoist

This is How To Split An Atom, and you must have been wondering where the software comes in. All right, here it is. Todoist is a great web based application that will allow you to set up a Goal Roll Call with ease.

It has a built calender to track your tasks over the week; integration with Gmail, Netvibes and iGoogle and aslick interface that should get you on top of your tasks in no time. It’s Web 2.0’s answer to a pen and paper.

Next time you are sitting around trying to figure out how to get a bit more out of your day, try a Goal Roll Call — you’ll be pleasantly surprised.