Nothing helps me be more productive than a Time Budget + Time Diary. About once a quarter I will map out my week in 15 minute increments using an excel worksheet. I start with my top priority and work my way down filling in blocks of time. Then throughout the week I keep this document open in one of my monitors about half width and log what I actually did in comparison to what I had planned. This may seem excessive but when I go through this exercise I get twice as much done as I would otherwise…despite the extra time planning and logging. The budgeting + logging makes me hyper aware of wasted time and time spent on things that are not priority. This exercise is pretty intensive and truthfully a little exhausting. I purposefully limit it to a week every couple of months. During the rest of the quarter I do a simplified version where Sunday evening I plan out my week in my calendar blocking out time for important items but not to the detail of the time diary. During my “off weeks” I don’t take the time to actually log all of the detail.