What to tackle and what to toss: “I don’t know anyone who is more organized or who has more energy and has more fun getting things done than Laura Stack.” —Mark Sanborn, New York Times –bestselling author of You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Leader There is a set of skills that make it possible to not only effectively manage a whirlwind of daily tasks but breathe easier in the process. In this book, Laura Stack—aka the Productivity Pro—explains each skill, and how to develop it. Learn how to: Determine what to do - Schedule time to do it - Focus your attention - Process new information - Close the loop - Manage your capacity These techniques can be applied in your personal life as well as your work life—to free up time, reduce anxiety, and achieve more while doing less. “This book will give you the tools you need as a leader to get more done yourself and through others. Laura Stack really is ‘the Productivity Pro.’” —Mark Sanborn, President, Sanborn & Associates, Inc., and author of You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Leader “Stack has captured in this book what those select few great leaders know: you cannot strategize your way to greatness. You execute your way there! A must-read for anyone who wants better results!” —Peter Sheahan, President, ChangeLabs “A how-to for leaders who are serious about results. Make time to read this book—then thank Laura for all the time you save on future projects!” —Harvey Mackay, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive Laura Stack is president of The Productivity Pro, Inc., 2011-2012 president of the National Speakers Association, and a popular keynote speaker on the topics of efficiency improvement, personal productivity, and time management. She is the author of four previous books, including Leave the Office Earlier . The Case for Reduction If you’re serious about your career, then you’ve probably read a number of books about time management and productivity in an effort to make better use of your workday. So what’s new about this one?  What to Do When There’s Too Much to Do  is unique in its approach to workflow, and I think you’ll find it a breath of fresh air in an overcrowded and increasingly redundant field. Simply stated, the central message is  it’s better to do  less , not more, so you can do better, more focused work. Many workers find this a startling concept, because they increasingly have to work harder and longer with fewer resources—and that’s precisely why my message is so very important. Over the last few decades we’ve learned to be superbly productive, yes, but in a way that can’t be sustained over the long haul. From a business perspective, productivity is the rate at which goods or services are produced per unit of labor. On a wider scale, this measure of corporate success is also a primary metric of the overall economic health of a nation. Collectively, we Americans are more productive today than at any time in our history.1 But just think about the factors motivating this productivity increase, especially in recent years. Many businesses have cut their staffs to the bone in an effort to save the bottom line; as a result, the truncated workforce must somehow do more with less, just like the woman who stopped me before my presentation that day. We’ve defaulted to working long hours just so we can keep our jobs. And it’s killing us. In fact, I think we’ve just about hit the ceiling of what we can accomplish by stretching ourselves so thin we’re practically transparent. Consider this worrisome factoid: According to a government report released in August 2011, American productivity declined for two consecutive quarters for the first time since 2008.2 The second-quarter decline for 2011 was a bit less than expected: an annual adjusted rate of 0.7 percent rather than the anticipated 0.9 percent (yay?).3 The bad news: 2011’s first-quarter productivity figure, originally estimated at 1.8 percent growth, suffered a sharp downward revision to reflect an actual productivity  drop  of 0.6 percent. Granted, we’ve experienced a minor economic expansion in the past few years. But the positive effects have been mostly limited to businesses, with very little trickle-down to individual workers. Indeed, as some observers have pointed out, many businesses posted productivity gains from early 2009 to late 2010  only  because they had previously cut costs. In the process they pared down their workforces, requiring the workers they retained to work longer hours—often for the same compensation. This refusal to increase the average worker’s pay even while forcing them to work harder may seem draconian, and in one sense it is. Workers know that there are plenty of people lined up to take their jobs if they complain too much about the pay and long hours, and many employers press this fact to their advantage. But in a larger sense, the flat compensation growth just continues a trend visible in the