I’m going to share with you what I call “switch busters,” ways to reduce the number of switches in your day. If you can do that, you can radically decrease the amount of time it takes to complete pretty much everything.

First, let’s get to one that really hits at the heart of being a business owner and that is all the hats you wear. That is going to create a lot of switches. Not only that, it’s going to reduce the value of your business. Why? Because you want to focus your time only on your most valuable activities (MVAs). Your most valuable activities are the one, maybe two things that you do that are worth the most per hour.

What are your top two MVAs? For most people in your business, it’s the direction to take the business. It can also be in developing leadership and training your people to be more effective at their job or in closing large sales deals. Now consider how much time you spend on them. For most, it’s usually around 22 percent or less of your total time. What are you doing the other 78 percent? Well, you are spending it on your LVAs, your less valuable activities. And when you do that, you are actually reducing the value of your business. What are your most common LVAs? Then ask yourself, How could I delegate those to someone else?

Another strategy is to establish a schedule of when you are going to focus on your most valuable activities. The more that you focus on your MVAs, the more valuable you become and the more focused and the less switching cost you pay.

Another switch buster deals with the concept of being in a race. When is the finish line in your day? How do you know when it’s time to stop? One important switch buster is to establish that finish line. When are you going to stop work? It doesn’t matter what your finish line is; it just matters that it exists and that it’s scheduled in your calendar, and you stick to it.

Little quick questions chop our day into pieces, and we lose productivity as a result. Part of this revolves around what I call the “culture of now.” So, I give you a phone call and you don’t answer. What do I do? I send you an email, and you take too long to reply. Then what? I send you a text message, and you don’t reply. So, then what? I send you another text message. Switch, switch, switch. Can you see how all of these build up so that we lose time? We want to transition from the culture of now to the culture of when. The “culture of when” says, “I will respond to every single message and every single responsibility that matters, and this is when I’m going to do it.”

To move to the culture of when, you can implement the “one-to-one huddle,” where you have a set time in the day or week where everyone queues up their questions, brings them to a meeting, and then you have a discussion. This contrasts with the open-door policy. The open-door policy is put into place because people want to feel accessible. But the problem is, now you have other people interrupting you, and no productive work is really getting done. May I suggest a closed-door, open-calendar policy? Rather than being distracted by something else that I am doing, I am going to focus on you 100 percent and give you the attention you need and deserve.

Many of the principles that apply in finance to money also apply to time. Sometimes people need to go into debt. What is the consequence of that debt? They have to repay that debt with interest. Can you go into debt with time? Is there a bank of time out there somewhere where you can make a withdrawal and then repay it? Yes, there is, but it’s not what you think.

You don’t borrow from someone else; you borrow from yourself. And when we borrow, we have to repay it with interest. If I borrow from a date with my wife to pay work, you can’t tell me I am not going to have to repay that with interest over a long period of time. So, the switch buster that we want to put into place is to underspend our time. We want to leave a cushion. For example, rather than having one-hour meetings, have 50-minute meetings. Every person’s work environment has a different amount of interruptions and switches that take place in their day. You want to build a budget for attention switches. The more likely you are to be interrupted, the more unscheduled time you want in your day.

Another important switch is the number of calls that are coming in. Here are two switch busters that we can implement to help with this. The first is channel expectations. What that means is, in every work environment, many people send each other different messages ― a text message, a phone call, an email. When should we use email instead of a text message? My recommendation is to get together with your team and list out the channels of communication. Say, “Here’s the best time to use email, and here’s the amount of time you can probably expect to receive a reply.” One way to do this is to reserve text messages as an emergency channel, not for back-and-forth conversation.

Another switch buster that you can implement is a gatekeeper. One simple system is what I call the “yes, no, maybe list.” You sit down with a gatekeeper and list the people to always let through ― your best customers, your spouse ― in the “yes.” In the “no” are anyone who is getting in the way of or interrupting your work. And then the “maybe” is “check with me first,” such as your mid-level customers.

Now let’s talk about the biggest problem, which is email. You have all these different messages coming at you, and it becomes overwhelming. But more important than the number of messages is when you check those messages. One way to combat this is to create an email checking schedule. It doesn’t matter how often it is.

If the volume is just too high, another thing we can do is to implement email filters and rules. This means that you just say, “When a certain message comes from a certain person, I’m moving it into a folder.” Try to avoid doing this unless you know that you don’t need to take immediate action.

Now let’s talk about a problem that many of you face. You have an overflowing mind. There are too many things coming in. Whenever something comes into your mind, immediately put it into a place where you know you’re going to take action on it. Send yourself an email or have a notepad designated for actions. Not only will you find that you are better able to focus on other people, but you will find that you are more creative because you are not using your mind for random tasks.

The last switch buster is simply to establish technology boundaries. It’s OK to turn the phone off sometimes. In fact, I encourage it because you will be more productive. Remember that, in the end, having success in business is about having success in whatever it is that’s meaningful to you.

Family is important to me. Perhaps it is also important to you, or perhaps you just want to have more time for vacation or for your hobbies. Whatever it is that you told yourself you were going to do, make sure that you take time to step away from technology and give yourself a chance to focus.

Dave Crenshaw develops productive leaders in Fortune 500 companies, universities and organizations of every size. He has appeared in Time magazine, USA Today, FastCompany and the BBC News. His courses on LinkedIn Learning have been viewed tens of millions of times. His five books have been published in eight languages, the most popular of which is “The Myth of Multitasking” — a time management bestseller. As an author, speaker and online instructor, Crenshaw has transformed the lives and careers of hundreds of thousands around the world.