Just saying ‘no’: My No. 1 productivity trick

You could circle the world at least dozen times just by stringing together all the words that have been written about productivity.

In particular, managing information overload in a social and new media era is a topic that never ceases to draw the masses. There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t see at least a post from someone lamenting how they simply can’t keep up anymore or keep track of what they have to do, or how they’re getting buried in information but not finding anything valuable out there. It happens to the best of us.

There’s a secret to all of this though. Well, a few, but they’re all kind of wrapped up into a single concept: Exercise your filters.

You have the tools available to you, and you don’t even need fancy software. It’s totally fine if you have a few favorite programs to keep you on your game. (I’m an Evernote devotee, for example.) At the most fundamental level, you need to stay focused on filtering information and accepting a few truths. Here’s what I mean.

1. The delete button and its cousins