Every day, our community manager, Richard Hylerstedt, reads through his feed of all Sandboxers’ blog posts. Every week, he chooses the most inspiring, funny or brilliant ones and reposts them on this blog. This post was written by Sandboxer Edward Harran on his blog – find the original post here. Follow Edward on Twitter.

As I continue along in my digital journey, I have had to adapt and refine my relationship with the online world. The internet is increasingly becoming complex – new applications, new people, new ideas, and new information. With this complexity, I have had occasions where I have experienced cognitive friction. Inbox Overload. People Overload. Information Overload. Sounds Familiar, yes?

In parallel with this journey, I have developed a deep interest and practice in two things:

1) System Thinking; and ( #thepetespence/rexstereffect)

2) Philosophies from David Allen – “The GTD Guy” ( #therosshilleffect)

Allen’s Book ‘How to Make It All Work‘ was a pivotal point in my development. And I don’t say that lightly. It is one of those books that looks like a cheesy self-help/time management piece, but, in reality, is filled with gems of wisdom. I describe it to my friends as a taoist handbook for 2011. David Allen calls GTD: “Knowledge Management Martial Arts”.

Over time, these two concepts have cross paths in my thinking – and given me practical tools to thrive in the web, rather than against it. The main takeaways I got ( and still getting) from these frameworks are:

Systems Thinking:
We – as in us, humans – are living and breathing open systems. We have inputs coming in, inputs and outputs we are trying to process….outputs we are executing. Think of it as a massive soup filled with all these interacting variables – ingredients coming in that brew and form together, and ultimately creating the finished dish. Thinking of my own self as a “system” has given me this odd love of complex situations as I have a simple lenses to understand and navigate it. Read this article from Holosync.

David Allen:
Clarify what is on your mind, decide what to do with what is on your mind, decide what the next action is when you decide what to do with what is on your mind. Very important. (Sometimes, you might decide that you don’t need to do anything. That is a decision you action in a sense as well.) Small actions lead to big things. Keep your scope in focus. Have a big vision, but know that the big vision comes into manifestation through doing small things every day. Momentum is everything.

+++

A few days ago after writing a massive post, I received a flood of emails in my inbox. In addition,I was scheduling skype calls, working on my business strategy and passion projects, helping my mum, talking with friends etc etc…. I knew I was on the edge of a cognitive nuclear bomb. So I stepped back, took some time away from my computer, went to the beach, did some writing in my diary, and looked at things from systems/GTD perspective.

Here is what I did:

Inputs Flux:

- Wrote down all the inputs that were coming into my system – from others, and for myself. I got what was on my mind down in a text document, everything and anything. It was a messy list; nevertheless, it was liberating to have it off my mind.

- Put my intention on Twitter that I was away. I originally tweeted “off the grid for a day or two to process everything and ground myself”. This gave me the internal permission to step away. I decided to decide to not engage in social media butterflying. To me, there are different layers to a digital sabbatical. There is first one – getting completely away from your computer, which I love doing. In this context, I realised it was less about getting away from the computer/ tools, and more about allowing myself to spent time NOT engaging with others - Twitter. Facebook. Phone calls. Skype. Blah, blah. After this, I am going for a walk. The Beach. I don’t need to reply on Google Plus. Those DMs can wait.

- Wrote a few reflection pieces in my diary. Intuitive free flow writing always seems to help me. I can write in my random tangentially way. No one can see my spelling and grammar mistakes, which sometimes I get overly conscious about. No one is going to read it expect me. I can take a left turn, then right, then left again. More importantly, it forces me to bring words to the mix of thoughts running around in my subconscious. I always feel more grounded when I do this.

Input Processing:

I cleaned up my processing systems. Think of a factory. The machines need to be working properly first, before you turn it on. These included things like:

- Clearing my inbox. Wrote a list on a separate TextFile of all the emails I had to response too. Seeing a clear inbox, even if I have to follow up, gives me a lot of freedom in my head.

- Reduced my twitter following. Attention is a real scarce commodity. I know I have the concentration span of a monkey (or maybe a dog) – as well as an insatiable appetite for ideas and people. And so I have realised the importance of creating spaces, “choice architecture” as they say, so that it is easier for me to focus on my tribe. On a macro level, my inner futurist spider sense tells me that in our increasingly interdependent world, having depth, trust, and openness with a tribe, a core group of people who get YOU, will become even more valuable.

- Cleared up my Evernote and put all my notes in proper departments.

- Deleted all my downloaded notes/junk/scribbles from my Desktop. I tend to collect a lot of digital artifacts. Getting rid of them helps me focus on the ones that matter.

- Cleared up my “Things” system. I was using Things a lot last year. It faded away a little bit. Mainly because I was making it overly complicated. Projects/Responsibilities/Ideas – too much stuff. So I gave it a blank slate and made it simple. I am only using it as a tool to record ACTION, not ideas.

- Writing it down side notes on an A4 paper. Call me old-fashion, but there is nothing better than a pen and paper. I love scribbles, especially with a nice fine point pen. (Side note: walking into a Japanese stationary store gives me tingles down my spine.) As I was going through this process, I had my diary close at hand. My sword to navigate the battleground.

Output Processing:

- Woke up this morning and asked myself, “What are the smallest actions I can take that will make the most valuable difference in helping me move my life forward?”. Asking this helps me to narrow my scope and get the important shit done.

- After spending 20 minutes reflecting on the day ahead, I had a clearer perspective of what I had to do. Interestingly, having this off my mind, gave me room to think about other potential things I could create. Since I had more psychic freedom and was getting the big rocks completed, I could act on this deep resonance I had to write this post, which you are reading right now.

- Refined my “Things” System and wrote actions I needed to do.

Output Action:

- Having clarified what my next actions were. I am slowly ticking off the list one by one.

- I have been using the The Pomodoro Technique. 25 minutes with 5 minute break.

- I have a bottle of water. H20 is awesome stuff.

- I have been be mindful of my breathing as I go along. Consciously engaging in my breath – in and out, in and out. Oxygen to the brain.

+++

So there you go. That is me today, on August 3rd 2011.

I have a big list of inputs that I have to still process into outputs. But, in comparison with yesterday where I was feeling overwhelmed, I feel grounded at the moment. Excited about it all. Like a canvas waiting to be painted. Everything is art when you think about it.

Furthermore, rather than it becoming about reaching a certain milestone, getting to some elusive point of success in the future – the process itself becomes the goal. Engaging in all this messy development IS what I love doing. Being the perpetual student – a master of nothing, a learner of everything. Becoming the better me, rather than chasing after it.

Test – Refine – Execute. And Again. And Again. And Again.

“Kaizen” as the Japanese say.

My simple concluding tweet is:

“Self as Open System + GTD Marital Art Practices = Mental Health Groundedness -> Ability to Thrive in Complexity”

#WINNING

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