You can do anything - but not everything.

If you allow too much dross to accumulate in your "10 acres" -- in other words, if you allow too many things that represent undecided, untracked, unmanaged agreements with yourself and with others to gather in your personal space -- that will start to weigh on you. It will dull your effectiveness. You've got to dig into the mess and put those things to rest. Productivity is about completion.

Isn't it interesting that people feel best about themselves right before they go on vacation? They've cleared up all of their to-do piles, closed up transactions, renewed old promises with themselves. My most basic suggestion is that people should do that more than just once a year. In fact, I tell people to take inventory weekly -- to sort through all of the stuff that they haven't yet acted on. If you can get a clear picture of everything that you have to do, you'll be able to say, "Oh, this is what I have to do right now" -- and then take the next step in getting it done.

If people took such an inventory, what would they find?

I like to talk about the "runway level" of life -- all of the current actions, all of the little things that stack up. On their runways, people typically have enough stuff to create 300 or 400 hours of work. What's driving all of those tasks are between 30 and 100 projects of various shapes and sizes -- commitments that people have made that require many steps to fulfill.

Once you've taken inventory, you can start to make sense of your runway. But then comes a second challenge: finding the time to do what you need to do. What's really different today is that we live and work in what I call "weird time." In weird time, no one gets 2 hours to do anything. Instead, we get 15 minutes -- and sometimes only 5 minutes -- between meetings and phone calls. You actually can get a lot done in weird time, but most people's thinking just isn't set up to take advantage of it. There are lots of opportunities during the day that people waste. They feel bad because they're not as productive as they should be, but they don't know what to do about it.

What to do about it is to turn it into a game: How efficient can I be? When something lands on your radar screen that isn't where it needs to be, you must decide two things. First, what's a successful outcome? In other words, what will stop the cognitive dissonance? And second, how do I allocate resources to make sure that the outcome materializes? That doesn't mean that you need to take action right away. But it does mean that, in order to get the task off of your mind, you need to decide on a course of action. The worst thing that you can do is to let things sit.

That doesn't necessarily mean that you should always work on "the important stuff" first. You might not have the energy, the tools, or the time. Sometimes, the most appropriate thing to do with five free minutes is to water the plants. Once you know what you're doing, productivity becomes your one true competitive edge. There's an elegance to how you work and live; it's not just about running faster.

That leads to a simple question that most of us find difficult to answer: How should we go about setting priorities?

When people ask me how to set priorities, I ask them a question: At what level do you want to have this conversation? Each of us operates on many different levels at all times. We each have a runway that holds all of the little things that consume our time. At 10,000 feet are the projects. At 20,000 feet, people are deciding on their roles and goals. At 30,000 feet, people are thinking ahead, asking themselves where they want to be in their careers 12 to 18 months down the road. At 40,000 feet, they're thinking 3 to 5 years out and looking at their organizational aspirations. Then, at the top -- at 50,000 feet -- they're asking, "What's my job on this planet?"

A Wall Street executive once complained to me about having to attend too many meetings. I drew a chart and asked, "At what level do you want to have this conversation?" I explained that at 20,000 feet, maybe you need those meetings. But if you go up a level and think about the next 12 to 18 months, maybe you can pass on some of those meetings. And at 50,000 feet, where you think about your heart and your health, you might say, "I don't need to make partner. I've made enough money. From now on, I'm going to leave at 7 PM every day. And if you don't like it, then fire me."

So a big part of setting priorities is being clear about your values?

Be careful. That's a very popular notion these days: If you focus on your values, then you'll improve the "balance" between your business and personal lives. Give me a break. Focusing on your values may provide you with meaning, but it won't simplify things. You'll just discover even more stuff that's important to you.