Get Things Done Faster and Better

Besieged by an unending stream of e-mails, workers have had to find techniques to get things done efficiently in our chaotic modern offices. As a result, time management—a bland, unexciting skill set—morphed into the trendy topic of “lifehacking,” touted at sites like Lifehacker and in books like The Four Hour Work Week and Getting Things Done.

While lifehacking often veers toward the mundane—Lifehacker’s most popular guide is about an (admittedly stellar) technique for quickly folding t-shirts—it is based on a set of principles that can be used to transform how you manage your life. Below, we highlight two core lifehacking principles you can use to become more efficient at work, helping you to get things done—and get out of the office on time.

Lifehacking Principle #1: Capture Everything

It’s a simple, yet commonly overlooked, fact: your brain can’t perform at its peak when it’s focused on remembering other things. If you’re focused on remembering to pick up bread on the way home from work, you won’t have the bandwidth to create a better version of a pitch or have a truly engaging conversation with a client. Even small things that you’re not consciously focused on—say, an idea you want to run by your manager at your next meeting—measurably reduce your brainpower and your productivity.

This means that you can significantly increase your productivity simply by getting thoughts out of your head. You’ll have more energy to focus on other tasks when ideas are out of your head and in a place where you know you’ll review them again, whether that’s a piece of paper, your calendar, or an online to-do list manager.

Getting Started. Paper aficionados can use Moleskines, legal pads, or even a stack of index cards to capture tasks. Technology fans who want to capture all of their information in one place should consider Evernote; it not only handles audio, text, and web clips, it can create a searchable database of contacts from pictures of business cards you collect. Wunderlist allows you to create to-do lists that sync everywhere, and is more customizable than standard to-do apps.

Caution: Your calendar doesn’t work well as a place to capture all of your ideas and tasks; it should contain time-sensitive tasks and meetings occurring at a specific time, not tasks that you’d like to get done during a block of time. And, as we discuss below, your e-mail inbox is also ill-suited for capturing all of your thoughts and to-dos.

Lifehacking Principle #2: Clear Your Inbox

Living out of your e-mail inbox is a surefire way to accomplish a bunch of small tasks that don’t yield any big accomplishments. Since so many requests come to us via e-mail, it’s tempting to keep your e-mail client constantly running, using it as a glorified to-do list.

To be fair, triaging tasks out of your inbox initially works out. As weeks pass, though, your inbox inevitably gets clogged with requests that you can’t handle right now and e-mails that you’re waiting for a response to. Eventually, the system collapses as more e-mails stay in your inbox than are processed out of it. You start failing to follow up on things, and ask colleagues to send you another e-mail to remind you to do something that they already e-mailed you about.

Taking all of the e-mails that come into your inbox and getting them out of there—whether to an archive folder, an action on your to-do list, a meeting on your calendar, or the trash—will free you to get out of your inbox and back to your real job.

Getting Started. Lifehackers swear by Merlin Mann’s “Inbox Zero” system of e-mail management, which you can read about on Mann’s website or watch a presentation on. The e-mail game uses a timer to force you to process e-mail quickly, while Boomerang allows you to schedule e-mails to be sent at a later date and to receive reminders if someone you e-mailed doesn’t respond.

Caution: If your inbox is irrevocably overstuffed, e-mail bankruptcy may be necessary. This is a one-time only solution, though, so make sure you’ve established good e-mail habits before invoking bankruptcy.

CEB Sales members, see how Kodak gets reps to focus on activities that contribute most to corporate goals and The Home Depot creates a message gatekeeper team to control the volume of internal communications and requests. Also, review our Practical Advice Series for tips and tricks on a range of topics from how to run effective meetings to the dos and don’ts of effective voicemails.