You are paid to deliver results. You are also pulled in lots of different directions and you will go home every day with some work not done. You need to make good choices about where you spend your time. Here are three tips to use your time and deliver maximum results.

Define what your top three priorities are and write them down. Reference the written priorities to decide what to spend your time on. If you can’t articulate your top three priorities, you don’t have a hope of delivering on the most important results. If you have more than ten priorities, you won’t treat any of them as high priorities. One way to push yourself is to boldly ask yourself “What failure to deliver will get me fired?”

I began this tactic about six years ago, and I realized quickly that my list of priorities was many more than three. I needed to take action to shrink the list. I started by looking at which responsibilities I could delegate. I could accept the risk of delegating anything for which I wouldn’t get fired. It also represented a growth opportunity for someone on my team to grow. I also stopped doing some things altogether. Once I had my three I knew where I needed to spend my time. I revisited this list at least every three months.

Review your calendar for the week on Monday morning first thing and ask yourself “Am I planning to spend my time in the places I’ll deliver against my top three priorities?” Do the same thing for each day at the beginning of the day. Require that your calendar today is a plan that will allow you to work on your top three priorities.

I examined my calendar each day and compared the schedule with my priorities. I would routinely have to ask if attending a particular meeting would help me deliver any of my top three results, and decline meetings that didn’t fit. I also had to add blocks for me to do work towards my priorities. Just as I would for any meeting with other people, I put a goal on my “self meeting” like “develop first draft of proposal” to avoid just blocking “time to work.”

Perform a 10-minute retrospective on your week on Friday and ask yourself whether you spent your time according to your plan. If you deviated a lot from your calendar, identify one reason why and one action you can take to mitigate that reason. Is your calendar packed with back-to-back meetings such that you can’t make it from one to another? Do you need to schedule time in between meetings to ensure you have time to be effective in each of them?

I recall looking back on a week full of meetings and realized that any day that I had more than twelve meetings was too much. It was possible to book more than twelve meetings; I would have back to back 30-minute meetings throughout the busiest of days. When I had twelve or more in one day, my energy was low and I was not at my best for the last of these meetings. I decided going forward my cap was twelve meetings in a day.

Remember, no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. Plan your week, work your plan, be flexible and look back to learn lessons.