Starting a new venture often involves facing down a never-ending to-do list. When Maggie Sellers started as an angel investor and content creator, she faced a long list of tasks to ensure her business grew and thrived. But the founder of Hot Smart Rich Media and HSR Ventures quickly made it manageable by creating her own system for personal productivity.
“You can really only do three essential things a week,” says Maggie on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “If you have a to-do list of massive projects and you have so many things to cross off your list, you’re going to get into analysis paralysis. And it’s hard to even know where to start because it just seems so overwhelming.”
Whether you use an informal system like Maggie’s or a classic productivity system like the Eisenhower Matrix, effective productivity methods can help you stay focused, lower stress levels, and finish tasks. Here are some of the most popular productivity systems used by ecommerce businesses of all sizes.
What are productivity systems?
Productivity systems are structured approaches paired with relevant tools that help you maintain focus and complete tasks. Individuals leverage personal productivity systems to manage their own tasks. Businesses may enhance productivity throughout their entire organization by implementing these types of tools and workflows.
In the ecommerce world, productivity systems are the backbone of scalability. An online store involves many moving parts, including inventory management, digital marketing, customer service, payment processing, and order fulfillment.
Many ecommerce companies operate with lean teams who need to respond quickly to shifting market demand. This requires efficient task management. By leveraging some of the most popular productivity systems—including time blocking, kanban, and Getting Things Done—these teams can prioritize tasks and keep pace with competitors.
Benefits of productivity systems
Whether you use a classic productivity system like the Pomodoro technique or a modern system that integrates with digital tools, productivity systems help you break complex projects into specific tasks. Here are some specific benefits of productivity systems in the ecommerce industry:
-
Faster decision-making. Well-defined systems surface the right information at the right time, helping your team respond quickly to sales trends, inventory issues, or customer feedback.
-
Scalability as your business grows. Productivity systems make it easier to add new products, channels, or team members without chaos, supporting sustainable growth.
-
Reduced stress and burnout. When responsibilities, priorities, and workflows are clear, you can allocate more time to the focused work that drives revenue and customer satisfaction. Instead of putting out fires due to poor planning, you can dedicate yourself to sales presentations, customer care, and improving your suite of products.
-
Less decision fatigue. A good productivity system can function like an operating manual for recurring daily tasks (e.g., fulfilling orders, responding to customer feedback). This saves your mental energy for high-level strategy.
Productivity systems streamline your focus, according to Maggie, especially when you focus on just one task at a time.
“When you only have a certain amount of things that you’re trying to accomplish, and you can actually cross something off of that list, it just makes you feel like you’re moving steps forward and you’re not stuck,” she says. “You’re actually going a lot further if you shorten down the number of things that you’re trying to do.”
9 of the best productivity systems to try
- The Eisenhower matrix
- The MoSCoW method
- The Kanban system
- SMART goals
- Getting Things Done (GTD)
- The Bullet Journal method
- Time blocking
- The Pomodoro technique
- The Ivy Lee method
As you audition different approaches, think about what problems you hope to solve with the ideal productivity system. Do you need help prioritizing important tasks? Do you need to avoid procrastination and time wasters? Do you need to find better ways to align your team on project progress? The answers to these questions will guide you toward the ideal productivity system for your business.
The right system for your company will depend on the size of your business, the size of your team, and the type of work you do. Here’s a look at nine productivity systems designed to encourage team collaboration and help you prioritize important tasks:
1. The Eisenhower matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix sorts tasks into four boxes:
-
Do First: Tasks that are both urgent and important.
-
Schedule: Tasks that are important but not urgent.
-
Delegate: Tasks that are urgent but not important for you to handle specifically.
-
Don’t Do: Tasks that are neither urgent nor important.
This approach focuses on prioritization rather than a to-do list of tasks. It helps you achieve clarity about what truly matters now versus later, or what doesn’t matter at all. When implemented throughout an organization, employees can deprioritize busy work that doesn’t contribute to company growth.
For example:
-
Do First: Fix a broken checkout page.
-
Schedule: Plan the Q4 marketing calendar.
-
Delegate: Respond to routine customer feedback.
-
Don’t Do: Browse a competitor’s Facebook page without a specific goal.
2. The MoSCoW Method
In the MoSCoW Method, you label tasks as:
-
Must-have
-
Should-have
-
Could-have
-
Won’t-have (for now)
Commonly used in software and product development, it’s specifically designed for resource allocation during a project.
The system works particularly well for defining the scope of product updates, marketing campaigns, or platform builds. However, without strict discipline, everything can end up labeled as must-have. Share clear parameters with your entire team to ensure consistent labeling. Tie each category to measurable impact, effort level, or business risk.
Here’s how the MoSCoW Method might apply when launching a new ecommerce clothing platform:
-
Must-have: Secure payment gateway.
-
Should-have: Product reviews.
-
Could-have: Live chat.
-
Won’t-have: Virtual reality fitting room.
3. The Kanban system
The kanban system centers around a visual workflow board with columns like To Do, In Progress, and Done to track tasks as they move through stages. It’s a highly visual tool that emphasizes workflow and identifies bottlenecks.
You can implement it digitally with computer software or a task management app (e.g., Trello)—or you can create a tactile kanban board using good old-fashioned sticky notes. While kanban boards aren’t the best system for implementing due dates, they’re great for sharing valuable insights with your entire team—especially if that team contains visual learners.
In the ecommerce space, you might want to use a kanban board to manage your content marketing pipeline. For example, you could have a card reading “Blog Post on Winter Trends.” As different team members work on the initiative, the card moves from To Do to In Progress to Done. Or, if you create custom categories, it can move from Drafting to Graphic Design to Published.
4. SMART goals
SMART is less of a daily task system and more of a framework for ensuring your business goals are reachable and worth pursuing.
Specifically, goals must be:
-
Specific
-
Measurable
-
Achievable
-
Relevant
-
Time-bound
The SMART system can help your team align their ideas with business results and performance tracking. At times, this may prove too rigid for exploratory tasks or a creative brain dump exercise. But when resources are limited, it helps your team members direct efforts toward high-priority items that will improve the company’s bottom line.
An ecommerce SMART goal could be: “Increase average order value by 15% within 90 days by adding suggested upsells at checkout.”
5. Getting Things Done (GTD)
Getting Things Done, commonly referred to as the GTD method, breaks tasks into five actionable steps:
-
Capture
-
Clarify
-
Organize
-
Reflect
-
Engage
This relatively simple system focuses on sequential actions to turn potentially overwhelming projects into attainable ones. It can also be applied to workaday repetitive tasks that require consistent effort to finish.
As an ecommerce owner, you could use the GTD method to put every feature request, tax deadline, and inventory alert into a single app or spreadsheet. You can then categorize them with labels like At Computer or Phone Call to help you plan their completion. If you stick with this approach, you may find yourself building habits that keep you on task without feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of projects on your plate.
6. The Bullet Journal method
Think of Bullet Journaling as an analog system in a digital world. Created by Ryder Carroll, it involves using a notebook to track tasks, notes, and long-term goals. Bullet Journaling combines task management, journaling, and reflection in one space by using “rapid logging” with symbols (e.g., bullets for tasks, circles for events). This journal is sometimes called a future log.
“It was never designed to be a method, originally,” Ryder tells the Shopify Masters podcast. “I grew up with pretty bad ADHD, and at the time, there weren’t a lot of tools available to me. The only platform that I had available was a paper notebook. So over the years, I started designing custom ways for me to become more focused, organized, and productive.”
As an ecommerce business owner, you could use a bullet journal to track daily sales wins, sketch out new website layouts, and log ideas for customer loyalty programs. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether you use it as a daily log, a monthly log, or something in between. It’s a great system to track progress, reduce stress, and keep you focused on long-term goals.
7. Time blocking
This simple method involves partitioning your day into specific “blocks” of time for specific tasks. For example, you can fill your calendar with boxes like “9:00–10:30: Customer Support,” and “10:30–12:00: Ad Optimization.”
As a productivity system, this approach treats time as a finite resource, similar to a budget. It steers you away from multitasking and toward deep work, where you singularly focus on one task for a designated period of time. The upside is that this can keep you on task and focused. The downside is that one single setback can ruin the entire day’s schedule. For instance, if you’d blocked out time to work on your website, a server outage will derail your plans.
8. The Pomodoro technique
This is a widely used time-management method based on short bursts of focused work. Often these are 25-minute sessions, each followed by a five-minute break. You can also adjust the durations of both the bursts and the breaks. For instance, a 45-minute burst might necessitate a longer break.
People use the Pomodoro technique to maintain focus, avoid procrastination, and prevent burnout. It’s popular because it can adapt to just about any work style. It’s focused on when you work, not how you work.
In ecommerce, you might use Pomodoros to power through a backlog of customer surveys or to upload 50 new product descriptions to your ecommerce platform. The work surges, followed by short breaks, can help you power through these tasks with more efficiency and less stress.
9. The Ivy Lee method
Productivity consultant Ivy Lee developed this method in 1918 to help Bethlehem Steel increase its efficiency. Lee told workers that at the end of each workday, they should write down the six most important tasks they needed to accomplish tomorrow and then rank those six tasks in order of their true importance.
Workers were told that the next morning, they should concentrate only on the first task, working until it was finished before moving to the second task. They’d continue onward, checking off one task at a time, the most important tasks based on the list they’d created the previous night. If workers couldn’t complete all their tasks in one day, the unfinished items would move to the next day’s task list.
In an ecommerce business, the Ivy Lee method works particularly well for founders or managers juggling competing priorities like inventory issues, marketing campaigns, and customer escalations. By forcing you to identify just six tasks—and complete them in strict order—it helps prevent reactive multitasking during busy sales cycles. The downside is its rigidity. Ecommerce work often involves interruptions (e.g., supplier delays or customer service spikes), which can derail a carefully ranked list.
Tips for implementing a productivity system
- Start with simple options
- Consider your organizational needs
- Weigh the strengths of each system
- Pick a system you can integrate into your workflow
- Design your own custom system
With so many productivity systems to choose from, it’s tempting to go hunting for a silver bullet. But the best system isn’t the most popular or sophisticated, it’s the one that fits how you actually work.
Think of productivity systems less like rulebooks and more like tool kits. You’ll get the most value by choosing the right tools for your current challenges and constraints. Here are some tips to pick the right option (or options) for you:
Start with simple options
If you’re new to productivity systems, start small. Lightweight approaches like the Ivy Lee method, time blocking, or the Pomodoro technique are easy to adopt and don’t require new software or complex workflows. These systems help you build focus and momentum quickly without the overhead of managing boards, tags, or frameworks. Once you’ve developed consistency, you can layer in more structure if needed.
Consider your organizational needs
As you audition different approaches, think about what problems you hope to solve with a productivity system. Do you need help prioritizing important tasks? Do you need to avoid procrastination and time wasters? Do you need to find better ways to align your team on project progress? The answers to these questions will guide you toward the ideal productivity system for your business.
Individual productivity and team productivity aren’t the same thing. Solo founders may thrive with systems like GTD or Bullet Journaling, while teams often benefit from shared frameworks like kanban or MoSCoW that make work visible and collaborative. Consider how many people need access to your system, how often priorities shift, and whether work is sequential or parallel. The more interdependent the work, the more important shared visibility becomes.
Weigh the strengths of each system
Every productivity system has trade-offs. SMART goals are excellent for aligning work with measurable outcomes, but they’re less useful for daily task flow. Kanban excels at showing progress but isn’t built for deadline management. GTD handles volume well but can feel heavy if not maintained. Understanding these strengths and limitations helps you choose intentionally instead of abandoning systems when they don’t do everything at once.
Pick a system you can integrate into your workflow
The best productivity system is one you’ll actually use. Look for approaches that integrate naturally into your existing tools and habits, whether that’s your calendar, project management software, or even email.
“Having a tight game on your productivity makes everything easier,” Renu Therapy founder Bill Bachand says in an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “I learned so many little tricks about calendar management, email management, blocking, time blocking, and virtual assistants. I have a really good virtual assistant that’s taking a big load off of me.”
Design your own custom system
The point of a productivity system is to make it easier for you and your team to accomplish more tasks that drive your business forward. Rigid adherence to one system matters less than staying focused, seamlessly onboarding new tasks, and avoiding the missed deadlines that can hinder progress. As you optimize productivity in your own organization, you can choose to implement a trusted external system like Eisenhower or kanban, or you can design a system of your own.
For instance, Bill doesn’t use a specific productivity system, but his bespoke approach includes core components of the methods outlined above, like the Eisenhower matrix and time blocking.
Productivity systems FAQ
What are productivity systems?
Productivity systems are structured methods and workflows that help individuals and teams organize, prioritize, and execute work efficiently and consistently.
What is the best productivity system?
The best productivity system for your business will depend on your objectives. If you’re trying to stay on task with day-to-day work, time blocking and the Pomodoro technique could be great choices. If you’re trying to align your team around collaborative goals, the kanban system might be a strong option. If you need help prioritizing the most important tasks, the Eisenhower matrix and the MoSCoW method are worth a look.
What are the four productivity styles?
The four productivity styles, as described by consultant Carson Tate, are:
-
Planners: who rely on schedules and structure
-
Prioritizers: who focus on ranking tasks by importance
-
Arrangers: who organize work through systems and environments
-
Visualizers: who use visual tools like boards and charts to stay productive
What is the 3-3-3 rule of productivity?
The 3-3-3 rule of productivity is a work approach where you complete three important tasks, three shorter tasks, and three maintenance tasks each day to stay focused and balanced.
