Dr. Corwin King is an adjunct professor in the master of arts in Medical Science Program at the Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences in Yakima, Wash.

How can professionals maximize their workday?

To get the most out of a workday, I'd suggest three things that a professional can do:

First, prioritize your tasks. If you have three things to do today, decide which one is the most urgent and do it first. Unless it’s an emergency, resist the urge to start with the latest task to hit your desk. You can spend a lot of time doing minor things that way, while major things don’t get done because you’re out of time.

Second, work on one task at a time. Avoid starting a task and interrupting it to do something else. It’s easy to work a bit on one thing and a bit on another, but at the end of the day you’ll realize you haven’t finished anything. As a clue, if you can’t remember what you accomplished today, you probably spent most of your time just spinning your wheels.

READ MORE