But despite doing all the right things, I haven’t accomplished anything substantive. So what went wrong?

If you’re having trouble achieving your goals for the day, you might be able to easily correct the problem by addressing one—or in my case, all three—of these simple issues:

1. Get a good night’s sleep. Yeah, yeah—you’ve heard it before. I’m right there with you. If I believed in reincarnation, I’d swear that in another life I must have been an owl. But facts are facts. I’m tired most of the time. And after a week of getting to bed a little earlier each night and feeling progressively better, I fell off the wagon and stayed up really really late only to find I was really really unproductive the next day. So even I have to admit there may be something to this “early to bed” stuff.

If you’re still not convinced, give it a chance. Try getting just an extra half hour of sleep a night and see if it improves your concentration and productivity, even a little.

2. Unclutter your work space. Lately I’ve been doing less work in my office and more work in places where I can easily be distracted. Why? Because my office is a mess. I’m supposed to be reorganizing my file system. But right now that means half the file cabinets are empty, and all the files are in boxes and baskets stacked on the floor. I don’t like looking at boxes and baskets of paper—so I stay out of the office. Since out of sight is out of mind, staying out of the office is a good excuse to keep putting off the filing task. And the longer I put off the filing task, the longer I’ll keep working where I can be easily distracted.

So how about you? Are you drowning in office clutter that keeps you from being as productive as you could be?

3. Create a schedule. My sister-in-law cracked up at me last Thanksgiving because she caught a glimpse of my to-do list. I’m the host for that holiday and couldn’t manage without The List—a minute-by-minute schedule beginning with “Get out of bed” and including every task from “Open door” and “Greet family” to “Sit down at table” and “Pray.” Once grace is said, they’re on their own.

I also usually create a daily to-do list, especially on work days. And when I fail to create a list, I don’t seem to get as much done. Something always manages to slip through the cracks.

If you map out your day—and commit to tackle planned tasks in priority order—you’ll be more likely to accomplish what must be done and less likely to get sidetracked by something unimportant. So when the whistle blows and the day ends, you won’t look back and think: What did I do with my time?