One of the best ways to distinguish yourself at work is through productivity. We're all sifting through too much email, we all have more work than we can ever get done, and we all have access to more information than we could ever consume.

The people who make the best decisions about how to process this information quickly and effectively are the people who will stand out in the workplace.

It used to be that people went to work from 9 to 5, and if you were serious about your career you worked much longer hours. But few people still aspire to a 9-to-5 job, and most of us use productivity tools to manage our time in a way that facilitates a great personal life and a great work life.

Thousands of people read productivity tips on Lifehacker.com every day of the week, and dissect David Allen's bestselling book Getting Things Done with the fervor of an English lit student explicating Ulysses.

Productivity skills are a new measure of career potential, so you need to develop them. Here are two suggestions for how to excel at productivity. You can read the rest at Yahoo Finance.

Focus on what you're doing so you can do it faster and better.
Most of the time, multitasking doesn't help you. It works for short, repetitive tasks that you're very familiar with. But you don't want to develop good work habits for boring work. You'd probably prefer to stretch your brain and try new things, and that kind of work requires focus.

A wide range of research has shown that even if you can talk on the phone and use email and IM at the same time, multitasking decreases your productivity. Our creative powers are compromised when we multitask.

The other common culprit to focusing is lack of sleep. Some people think they can use caffeine to dull the need for sleep, but it catches up with them. Fortunately, you only need a 10-minute nap to get your brain back on track. And when you're making up for several nights of lost sleep, you don't need to make it all up — you just need seven hours to get back on your game.

Delegate.
Once you know what's most important to you in all aspects of your life, you'll know what to delegate. And the answer will be almost everything. The hardest part of productivity is admitting that you can't do everything.

In fact, it's the core of what being an adult is — as a child, everything looks possible. Adults are hit quickly with the cold reality that they can only do what's most important. So be very clear on what that is, and delegate as much of the other stuff as you can.

At work, good delegating doesn't mean dumping your worst tasks on your co-workers. In fact, you often need to delegate your most appealing work and do some of the grunt work yourself. Because in the end, your No. 1 productivity goal is to get what's important done — it doesn't matter who gets it done, and you're more likely to get a lot of help if you offer your fun stuff.

This holds true for your home life, too — you can delegate a lot more at home than you think you can without losing the things you care about most.

Read the rest at Yahoo Finance.