Every successful goal starts with a good plan.

Let’s start at the very beginning. You’re swamped with work like running errands and going to meetings; you feel like you don’t have any spare time. How do you get started when you have to tackle everything?

Before you take any action, you have to define your goals. Clarity is an essential part of productivity: you can’t work unless you know what you have to do. So figure out what tasks matter the most – the first step in overcoming procrastination.

It’s a good idea to write your goals down instead of trying to sort them out in your head. Here’s an important fact to remember: only three percent of adults manage their time with written goals, and they accomplish five to ten times as much as other people. Even highly educated individuals are less productive than those who write down their goals.

After you’ve outlined your goals, plan your time in advance. Break your goals down into a series of steps you can deal with one after another.

And use checklists. They help you visualize your goals. When you look back on the tasks you’ve completed, you’ll feel proud. You’ll also be more motivated to keep going!

Did you know productivity improves by 25 percent when you work from a list? You save a lot of time when you don’t have to decide what to do.

Finally, work even more efficiently by using the 80/20 rule, also called the Pareto Principle. The 80/20 rule says that every list of ten tasks should include two that are much more important than the others. Focus on those two.

Most people mistakenly focus on the easy things first – the 80 percent – and procrastinate on the 20 percent that really matters.