Take out a piece of paper, and write down your three highest value activities. These are things that you are good at (your Brilliance), that only you can do in your business, and that are important to the success of your business or career. Imagine what would happen if you all your time focused on those three activities, and delegated everything else to others in your organization.

Here’s the deal: Focusing on three projects is a lot easier than focusing on 50. And a lot more productive, too. When you focus on three key tasks, you build the momentum you need to get results much faster than you do when you are juggling a million things. I call this the Power of Three. This is the single most important time management tool you can implement in your business.

Ben is a marketing consultant to small businesses. In an attempt to grow his business, he was working 70 hours a week. The killer? Ben’s “to-do” list was often 100 items long. It was tough to put a dent in it, and despite the long hours he was logging Ben felt disorganized and harried.

When Ben hired me to coach him, one of the first things I asked him to do was identify his three highest value activities. Here’s what he came up with:

1. Consulting (the actual time with his clients)
2. Marketing (to attract new clients)
3. Speaking (to local service clubs and organizations)

When we looked at Ben’s list of 100 activities, very few of them had anything to do with these three activities. Not only that, but because Ben was getting bogged down in less important tasks, his marketing efforts suffered.

I asked Ben to begin every morning by writing down three highest value activities to do that day. The most important change he made was scheduling a daily marketing activity. His consulting time and speaking schedule were already on the calendar, and he made sure he did at least one thing every day to attract new clients into his business.

This small, but powerful, tweak in Ben’s life not only helped him to grow his business, but it also freed up his time. He was able to delegate many of the other activities on his long list, and simply stopped doing other things that weren’t productive. Sure, he occasionally gets distracted by less important activities. But he’s much better about making sure the important things get done daily.

Make the decision today to focus on your three most important activities. Eliminate or delegate the other activities on your to-do list. Try this time management technique for 30 days, and let me know the effect it has on your business, and on your life.