Our Favorite Productivity Hacks

We love January. It brings new opportunities and ambition for the year ahead. It’s also a great time to reflect and kickstart new processes and enhance productivity to achieve new goals.

We’ve put together a list of our favorite productivity hacks, hoping that some of them might guide you in achieving your goals for 2021!

Set Your Goals by Bullet-Journaling

Bullet journaling helps us combine our personal goals with our professional goals, streamlining everything in one place. The key here is to update the journal on a daily basis. This creates constant awareness and a deeper understanding of the goals that really matter to you, and which projects – both in your job and personal life – should stay or go.

Use a Project Management Tool

There are countless project management tools out there - we use Asana within our team. It’s truly the most interactive way to manage the projects for both our clients and our own company. Whether you prefer regular to do lists or Kanban boards, Asana allows each team member to work in their preferred interface. 

Communicate & Collaborate via Slack

This internal messaging platform, which can also be used to create channels and collaborate with external companies (e.g., clients or partner agencies), has saved us a lot of inbox clutter. We’ve always worked remotely, and Slack is the number one tool that has made working remotely and communicating across country borders a breeze. 

Listen to Music to Focus

We know this isn’t for everyone – some people can’t focus when listening to music. And we certainly don’t have music blasting at the office all day. However, there are some tasks that are just more fun when there’s good music involved. So, instead of procrastinating we recommend you browse Bandcamp, Spotify or SoundCloud for a good playlist and get cracking.

Declutter Your Inbox

This one is pretty straight forward. Create folders in your inbox and make sure to sort your emails weekly, if not daily. Add any tasks that result from emails into your project management tool, respond to the emails if needed, and then move them to their allocated folders. An organized inbox can really make you feel less overwhelmed with work. 

Take a Walk

If you’re stuck, take a walk. That’s always been something we live by, yet it has become so much more important during this whole lockdown phase where we are quite confined to our spaces. Writer’s block? Running out of creative campaign ideas? Unsure how to structure a strategy? Simply step outside for a bit and see where your mind takes you.

Keep Track of Your Dates

Most of you will already be doing this on your phone. Yet with everything being digital these days, we are obsessed with using traditional pen-and-paper diaries to keep track of our calls, meetings, important dates, and notes. Our favorite diaries are handmade by Sloane Stationery.

Initiate Deep Work Sessions

We all know how difficult it can be to focus on one task, and one task only. Deep work sessions allow you to take planned time to focus on achieving one specific task in a distraction-free environment. Pick a location, timeframe, and structure, and make sure you dedicate part of your working day to deep work. Here’s a great guide on how to master it.

What are your favorite productivity hacks? Do they include any of the above? We’re always up for trying new tools and ideas, so please feel free to share your favorites with us.