I have been reading several articles about time management and how to increase productivity in your business when your running a small, medium or even home based business.

I personally felt like our company had problems achieving the goals we set last year, and I have felt we haven't got anywhere for a while. So I decided to try to do something about my productivity by making some changes in our on going education and development.

I started viewing a site specific to this goal, which contains a lot of very good and interesting business guidance videos. One of these videos took me to a program called EDGE, Expert Directed Guidance Education and inspired me to start a new experiment, one of the Professional Development videos talks about how to wake up and achieve something before doing any other tasks everyday. The basic of this video series is, that if you start your day off by doing your most important task for that day, you will get a self-esteem boost and possibly get more done that day. Thinking that this would be a good mindset for our employees as well as my self.

I'm not sure how this exactly will work on me and our employees. First of all, I have to admit that Im not a morning person at all - I need my coffee and my time alone. If I try to go running in the morning, I always get sick and do not get as much out of the trip as if I go in the afternoon. If I get caught by some interesting work, I can stay up all night and work where I suddenly notice that it is sunrise. So the thought of starting my day with actually doing the most important goal for the day sounds challenging.. None the less, I decided to make an honest effort.

I only just started on this experiment a few weeks ago, but the conclusion so far is that it actually works. So far I let my self make a cup of coffee and take my son to school, before I start working - but I try to avoid surfing the net, reading email, watching news or doing anything else that isn't what I set as my morning goal. I simply just make my coffee and have some family time before the school day starts, and then go directly into my office - close down my mail program, and only keep the windows open related to the work Im doing right at that moment.

It really works to focus on that task of the day, and no matter how much of the other things you planned to do that day, you know you got the most important thing done, because you did it first.

As for the experiment, I will continue to do this from now on; every evening I decide what the first thing I will get done tomorrow will be. That way I don't have to spend the rest of the evening / night thinking about that thing, because I know it will be dealt with as the first thing tomorrow.

That and a lot of other interesting posts on EDGE and the mastermind group they sponsor have really inspired me, and I will try to follow more and more advice from sites and vblogs like EDGE. I hope this maybe has inspired you too.

Do you follow any of these EDGE videos or resources? Do you run experiments like that to increase your productivity, or do you have a speciel way of getting things done? I hope you will share your experiences with EDGE and ways of increasing productivity.