The technique I learned from Dan Sullivan (www.StrategicCoach.com) is the one I still use.  In a nutshell, you have three types of days:  Focus, Buffer, Free.

A focus day is where you only do the items that are your highest and best use of time.  In my case, I do writing (copywriting, products, community building), speaking and tax strategies.  

Buffer days consume most of us.  This is “everything else” that goes into business.  

Free days are 24 days where there is NO BUSINESS.  Period.  Just turn your head off and do something fun.

Most people have buffer days 24/7.  The first piece to carve out is a free day.  One of my tricks is to drive over to our San Diego house.  I almost never fly because the 7 hour drive is fun for me and because my cell phone doesn’t work for most of the trip.  Hey!  I found a free day.  I think about any and everything, listen to satellite radio and just generally decompress.  And then I’m in San Diego.  :-)

Next find your focus activities.  For most of us, we might still be defining more about the eCenter of our business.  The two often go hand in hand.  Define something as focus anyway.  That’s so you can get used to being proactive in planning your day. 

Hardest of all, pick a day a week to ONLY do those focus activities.  That’s it.  No other meetings, nothing.  Just focus.  My focus days are Tues & Thurs.  I’ve had to add Wed in a half focus/half buffer way because I have so many clients who use Wed as their admin/buffer day.  Often another’s buffer day (even if they don’t call it that) is my focus.  That’s because they’re talking to their CPA (me) on those days!

What’s left is Buffer.  It’s okay to have some free time on a buffer day, but that doesn’t make it a free day.  And, it’s okay to have some focus activity on a buffer.  But that’s doesn’t make it a focus day.

Try it out and let me know!  

Here’s my PS to my post.  In typing this and going through the steps, I see now why the multi-tasking has been overwhelming for me.  I’ve let my focus days slip into all buffer.  I need to get the buffer activities out of Tues & Thurs.  And for Wed, I just realized I’m going to take Wed AM to do writing.  So my ONLY buffer days will be Mon & Fri.  Hmmm….I need to move some things around.