I have been using task-management software since the late 90s, when I first installed a program developed by Franklin-Covey. Since then, I have tried almost every system available, including Things, Remember the Milk, OmniFocus, Midnight Inbox, iGTD, Wunderlist, and many more.

But the one I have used for more than four years is Nozbe. In my view, nothing else comes close. The company just released a new desktop version (both Windows and Mac), which I have been beta-testing for the past few months.

Do you feel overwhelmed by your e-mail? Do you feel like you are hopelessly behind and will never catch up? Do you feel like stuff is falling through the cracks? If so, I have great news. In this episode I talk about how to take control of your e-mail inbox. Specifically, I outline four behaviors that will transform how you think about e-mail.

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I awoke this morning to the dragon’s hot breath on my face. I was disoriented, not quite knowing where I was. I struggled to open one eye. Then another.

And there he was. A dragon. A very big dragon. With three heads. Sitting in my bedroom, like so many mornings before, he was waiting. His heads swerved back and forth, dancing in the dim light. Each head alternately belching fire and hissing smoke.

Be honest. You’re distracted, right? In fact, that’s probably why you are reading this blog post instead of working on that project you should be working on now.

Maybe you’re like my friend, Justin, who told me a few weeks ago that he was having real trouble making progress on his book. “The deadline is looming,” he admitted. “But I can’t seem to get focused.”

I wrestle with this question everyday, if not several times a day. Most of the things pinging our brain for attention our merely urgent but often trivial.

In this brief, two-minute video clip, Behance founder and CEO Scott Belsky discusses how today often trumps tomorrow and what happens when it does. He then discusses how to distinguish between the urgent and the important.

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.

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.

Perhaps you may have heard the adage, “what gets measured gets improved.” I would propose a parallel principal: “what gets tracked, gets done.” This is especially true when it comes to delegation.

In 2004, I bought a Toshiba Tablet PC. I had hoped I could use it for taking notes in meetings, using Microsoft’s OneNote software. However, after a few months, I gave up. The system was just too clunky. I resigned myself to using a Moleskine notebook for taking notes in meetings.

However, a few weeks ago, I was sitting in a meeting with one of our authors. Several people pulled out their iPads and began taking notes. This piqued my curiosity.

Last week, I twittered a link to one of my most popular blog posts ever, “Yes, You Can Stay on Top of Email.” Almost immediately, I received two email messages.

The first person said, “I really want to catch-up on email, but I have over 2,100 unread messages in my inbox. Every time I think about trying to catch up, I get a knot in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know where to begin!” The second person expressed a similar sentiment, confessing to more than 2,500 unread messages.