If you multitask you’ll produce less. If you organize your calendar and to-do list the traditional way, you’ll only intensify guilt and stress. If you keep too busy, you’ll soon wonder how a year passed you by without ever accomplishing the things you most wanted to achieve. There has to be a better way to focus your time on what you value and say no to the rest.

There is. In his book, 18 MINUTES: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction and Get the Right Things Done, Peter Bregman, one of Harvard Business Review’s most popular online columnists, offers an inertia intervention plan for achieving your priorities at work and in life.  In today’s show Bregman will teach us how to navigate through the constant chatter of emails, text messages, phone calls, and endless meetings that prevent us from focusing our time on those things that are truly important to us in our work and in our lives.

Peter Bregman is the CEO of Bregman Partners, a global management consultancy where he is the advisor to CEOs as well as to their top management teams on leadership and workplace issues. He has appeared on CNN and PBS, and writes for HBR.org, PsychologyToday.com, Fastcompany.com, and Forbes.com, is a regular contributor to WNYC Radio, New York's NPR affiliate and has spoken at TEDx.  Peter has used his approach to improve performance at some of the world’s premier organizations, including Morgan Stanley, NASDAQ, JP Morgan Chase, Allianz, Victoria’s Secret, Converse, Katz Media Group, and FEI, among others. He has worked with companies throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He lives in New York City.