My Productivity System

Learned and simplified by 35 years of corporate life

Lisa Bage
10 min readDec 6, 2024

’Tis the season! The season of planner overwhelm. Look at one and the computer bots will send you hundreds. They all look so similar, so complicated, and yet which is the perfect system for you? If you choose wrong, that $50 planner will be in the trash by February and your all-important things-to-do right alongside them in the bin of regret.

A stack of pretty annual planners with postit notes and flags sticking out (generated by Substack AI)

It doesn’t need to be so complicated. The real key to productivity isn’t the tool. It’s the process. This is the process I built for myself over the years. I’ll include the tools I used, but they are free and low effort. I have used all the expensive tools and some of them are incredible. But you don’t need those to get things done.

All you really need is:

  • A notebook and pen
  • 10 minutes a day
  • <30 minutes once a week
  • 30 minutes once a month
  • 30–60 minutes once a quarter

My journey

As a young manager, I was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with the number of things to keep track of, tasks to get done, and goals to achieve.

It wasn’t just my corporate job either. I was in school at night to finish my MBA and had two young children.

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Lisa Bage
Lisa Bage

Written by Lisa Bage

Former CEO helping managers build better teams and stronger workplaces. Get personal help at https://www.copperleafsolutions.com/contact.

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