When the evening comes, do you often find yourself thinking that you actually are at the same point than when your work day started?

You might already know David Allen’s Getting Things Done method. While to many people, keeping the system updated at all times feels too rigorous, there are a few tricks we have been using at Sandbox to make sure that we actually get stuff done.

1. Use task lists

Task lists are a key tool for productive work. You need to have an overview and know what the priorities are. I personally use two lists:
- A weekly list, which I prepare on Sundays. I take a step back, organize the week to come, and think of all the things that need to be done in the next 7 days.
- A daily list, more detailed, with everything I want to get done until the end of each day.

I better put less than a lot of stuff on these lists, but this stuff really needs to be done by the end of week. I prioritize the tasks between nice-to-have objectives and real priorities. At Sandbox, we call the latter “Do or Die”.

There are lots of task lists programs and online tools out there. The one I am using is Remember The Milk.

2. Track your time

We have begun to track our work time one year ago, and haven’t stopped since then. We track our total work time and the time spent on each of the areas we are responsible for. It has proven to greatly help focus. There are several tools available. We use Time Edition, a very simple manual time tracker. There are also a couple of automated tools that you can install, like RescueTime – though they are less reliable and don’t take the offline work time into consideration.

Track your time for one week and you will see that the amount of hours you actually worked are much inferior to what you could tell looking at your work schedule. Look at the hours you spent answering emails, surfing on random sites or on Facebook and you will understand why.

From there, fix yourself objectives: how many productive hours do you want to work next week? Some say that 4 productive hours per day should be enough to achieve the objectives of a normal 9 to 5 job. Some others pretend that you can do the same in 4 hours of work per week though for most of us, this is a less realistic objective.

3. Inbox zero

The inbox is not the place where all your emails should be stored. At the contrary, you should try to keep it empty as often as possible. At Sandbox, we are now all using Gmail for both our personal and professional emails. I try to only look at my inbox 3-4 times a day. Then, if a message only needs a short action from my side, I take care of it right away and archive the email forever. If the task will take more than just a few minutes, I put this email in a folder called “ACTION”, and then go back to normal work. I keep myself 30-45 minutes a day for answering these. You can hear more about inbox zero here.

4. Know yourself

Know the strongest times of your workday. You aren’t working all day long at the same intensity, therefore you should try to do the creative tasks when the energy-level is high and the easier, repetitive tasks when you have more trouble to concentrate. If you are too tired, you’d better make a break or take a short nap instead of sleeping in front of your computer screen.

Tell us about you, have you tried out these tips? What are your most effective productivity tricks?

Antoine is a Co-Founder and the CEO of Sandbox. With this blog post, he has just finished his last task of the week and is now getting ready for the 7.30am Monday morning check-in with the Zurich team