It’s inevitable. Sooner or later, your hard drive will fail or you will accidentally delete a file you meant to keep. And, as a corollary to Murphy’s Law, it will likely happen at the worst possible time—the day you finish writing a long report or manuscript, complete your annual budget, or have to make a major presentation.

It is happened to me more than once, which is why I am such a fanatic about backups. Here’s the system I use with my Mac.

If you are like me, 90 percent of your communication is digital. It is done via email, Twitter, or instant messaging. However, I still have a physical inbox. I get letters, an occasional paper memo, a handwritten note, paper reports, brochures, catalogs, etc.

So where does all this stuff go and how do you manage it? This may seem obvious, but a peek at a few of your colleagues desks—or perhaps your own!—will convince you otherwise.

Jason Fried is the co-founder and President of 37Signals and author of Rework. At a recent Ted Conference, he spoke on the topic of “Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work.” (Thanks to ChurchCrunch for bringing this video to my attention.)

Jason’s presentation got me to thinking, Where am I the most productive? Big surprise: it’s not at the office. Evidently, I am not alone.

One of the great stressors in life is that feeling that we’ve forgotten something important. Each day we are bombarded with so many demands on our time that we are simply unable to act on them all, forcing us to tread carefully through a time management mine field for most of the day.

Our inboxes contain requests for the trivial and the important, all watered down by endless junk mail that is specifically designed to grab our attention. Voicemails allow others to drop off assignments and due dates over which we have little or no control. Poorly led meetings eat up valuable time, and drop off the occasional action item as well.

The literary giant, C.S. Lewis, wrote many wonderful books and stories in the mid-twentieth century. Among his finest works is The Screwtape Letters, in which Lewis portrayed two demons with the malicious intent of wreaking havoc in the life of the “Patient” assigned to them by their dark master. Their ploys were crafty, filled with accusations and lies.

Whether or not you believe they are real, the story compels us to consider what these demons might write about us today. What tricks and treats would they deploy to distract us from our purpose and lead us astray?

This month has been crazy busy. I have spoken publicly a dozen times already, and the month isn’t even over! In addition, I’ve had to finalize our strategic plan and attend two different board meetings. I’ve been on the road almost non-stop.

Who’s to blame? Me. I did it to myself.

My to-do list is at the center of my personal workflow. Like you, I am bombarded with scores—sometimes hundreds—of requests every day. They show up in my inbox, on the phone, and at my door. All of them want action now.

That’s why years ago, I learned the importance of creating a daily to-do list. It might sound simple, but I don’t know of a more important productivity tool.

Do you know your weaknesses as well as your strengths? Early in my career, I thought I had to be good at everything. It didn’t help that I had a boss who seemed to be great at everything. This challenged me to work on my own “areas of opportunity.”

According to bestselling author Marcus Buckingham, in his book Now, Discover Your Strengths, most organizations are built on two flawed assumptions about people:

One of the most helpful time management principles I have found is David Allen’s Two-Minute Rule. The basic concept is that you take immediate action on anything that can be done in two minutes or less. This is the key to becoming more productive.

To implement this, you should do these kinds of actions NOW. Why? Because it will take longer than two minutes to write the action down on your to-do list, organize it, get back up to speed later, and complete the task. Instead of going through that whole rigmarole, you just do it and move on to the next task. It is a huge productivity booster. And it will keep your to-do lists much shorter.

I am not a big fan of computer mice. Every time I have to take my hand off the keyboard, it costs me a few seconds. This may not sound like much, but it adds up over the course of a day.