Edit your choices down to the essentials

Finding the straightest and shortest route to your goal is the key to achieving it. If you are an entreprenuer, you might find yourself conjuring up a new idea every day. It's fun to imagine what possibilities exist - or the myriad of ways you could do it, but finding the most direct and effective method of getting it done is critical. While you need to be flexible enough to allow a reworking of your plan, you need to try to keep your analysis of how your new idea is relevant to a minimum. Make your decision and stick with it. Keeping a journal where you can quickly record your newest idea and, if appropriate, let it go may help you to stay on track.

They say that successfull people are efficient people. They are people who know how to edit and stay on task. A great idea only becomes reality if can be executed on time and within budget.

Jason Fried of Inc. Magazine suggests there is great power in saying No! Eliminate distractions, side notes, tangents and, instead, focus on the next constructive step toward execution. Here he writes about using the word "No" to keep it simple. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20101201/how-to-kill-a-bad-idea.html

A new tool I'm trying out is an "action day" calendar which I just purchased for 2011. I admit, it is a hand written calendar which I returned to following the loss of my entire iphone calendar. Thanks to an apple bug my calendar and backup versions were erased approximatly one month prior to my wedding. As you can imagine, between work and the wedding, it caused a great deal of chaos which I have not entirely recovered from. My new calendar allows me to plan for the week ahead, marking down which actions are to be completed towards a specific bigger goal and also separates my more mundane "tasks" into a separate column. This way, I can clearly see that in order to move forward in completing my next goal, I must get my actions completed, even if a few tasks go undone. http://www.actionday.com/

Another trick to staying focused is to star or highlight no more than 4 items at a time, finish those actions without distraction and then look to see what should be tackled next.

Alternatively, if you have unlimited resources you can choose to get things done the Brazilian way; "Why do something today that you can pay someone else to do for you tomarrow?" If only I were so lucky.