One of the hardest parts of being your own boss is avoiding endless busy-ness.

I struggle almost every day with filling my time with hundreds of little semi-meaningless task that are only marginally helpful to my career, but still necessary to mantaining a business.

This is the curse of life- we spend the majority of our time doing things that in the grand scheme of things really don't matter much.

While a certain degree of busy-ness is a necessary evil, it doesn't have to dominate your life. Here's two quick things I do to avoid filling my day with things that don't matter:

Make a list

Look over your list, and decide which things are really necessary. It's amazing what you can cut out by just following this step alone.

Set a Timer

When I have a large number of small tasks to do, I set a timer and attempt to get as many items done as possible in a fixed amount of time (I've already answered email, contacted 3 music industry people and set my meeting schedule for the week in the last 25 minutes).

We all only have so much time. Make it count.

What's the best way you've found to keep "task clutter" from piling up? Leave your answer in a comment below.