Define your MITs. MIT stands for most important task， and just by taking a few moments to identify 3–5 things you must accomplish each day， you will improve your overall productivity—because you cant focus on your important work if you dont know whats important.

确定你最重要的任务（MIT）。MIT代表的是最重要的任务，而只需花很少的时间来确定每天必须完成的3到5件事，就能提高你的整体效率——因为如果你不知道哪些工作是重要的，你就不可能专注于重要的工作。

Do the thing you want to do the least， first. Prioritize those items you are most likely to procrastinate—your day will go much more smoothly when the phone call youre dreading or the report you dont want to write are finished and no longer weighing on your mind.

最先做你最不想做的工作。将你最有可能拖延的工作优先完成——当你把最不想打的电话打完或最不想写的报告写完，你的一天会顺利得多，而这些事也不会积压在你心上。

Dont multi-task. We live in a multi-tab， multiple device kind of world， but scientists tell us that none of us is truly a good multi-tasker. Working on one thing at a time will make you faster and less apt to make mistakes.

不要一心多用。我们生活在一个多任务、多方法的世界，但是科学家告诉我们，没有人能真正同时兼顾多项任务。一次只专注于一项工作能够提高效率并减少错误。

Work offline. The Internet is a fantastic， but tempting place. If you have difficulty avoiding its distractions， work offline or take your work somewhere without an Internet connection to force some focus. You can get so much work done on long plane journeys and sometimes you can go to a local coffee shop for some uninterrupted work.

离线工作。互联网是一个新奇但诱惑巨大的地方。如果你很难避免它带来的分心，离线工作或者去没有网络的地方工作，强迫自己专心。你可以在长途旅行的飞机上就做很多工作，有时你还可以去当地的咖啡店专心工作，避免被打扰。

Do important work. In the classic Seven Habits of Highly Effective People， Steven Covey presents a matrix that divides our activities into four categories： urgent and important， not urgent but important， urgent and unimportant， and not urgent not important. The key is to spend most of our time in quadrant two， doing the important work that isnt driven by crisis.

做重要的工作。在《高效人士的七个习惯》这本经典中，斯蒂芬·科维展示了一个矩阵，他将人类活动分为四类：紧急和重要的，非紧急但重要的，紧急但不重要的，以及非紧急也不重要的。关键就是要将我们大部分的时间放在第二象限，即做那些非紧急但重要的工作。

Be succinct. When writing emails， get to the point quickly. A good rule of thumb is to limit your email to five sentences or less.

做到简明扼要。当你写电子邮件时，以最快速度讲到重点。一个好办法是电子邮件不要超过五句话。

Batch similar tasks. The simplest example of this is choosing to process emails only once or twice a day rather than jumping like one of Pavlovs dogs every time the computer dings. Identify tasks that are interrupting your flow （email， phone calls， meetings， etc.） and schedule a time to do them all at once.

批量处理相似任务。最简单的例子就是每天抽出一或两段时间只处理邮件，而不是像巴甫洛夫的狗那样，电脑一响就跳过去查看。……