having goals and acting upon them are all aspects of identifying and translating what matters to you most into daily activities. It is beyond this article to go into every aspect. On my blog I focus on this aspect and provide ways of identifying what matters to you. In my opinion knowing who you are and what you want are the most important aspects of productivity. They provide the background against which you can start with simplifying your life aligned with what you want. Efficient time: do things the easy way One of my guidelines is: Simple is always better than complex. There are a lot of ways to do things more efficiently and most of them fall into one of these categories: Do things only once One of the things our brain does is re-remember things that haven't been done yet and have/could/should be done. This is a waste of time. Use methods like GTD to overcome this behavior. Do things smarter Almost every single task has been done by someone countless times before. A lot of people are looking to do things easier, faster and better in less time. Look around on the internet (and certainly around Zen Habits) and you'll find smarter ways of doing what you need to be doing. Automate things Using software to do tasks for you is the common idea when we think about automation. But integrating efficient behavior in everyday habits is also a way of automating things. You could call it