Top 10 Productivity GSD Outlook Tips
August 31st, 2008
Many of you out there do not sit in front of the computer all day and hence this blog post may not be as relevant…and stop rubbing it in. For the rest of us, we have to use Microsoft Outlook all day in between reading Fantasy Football articles on ESPN. Life sucks….but so does Chad Ocho Cinco.
Disclaimer: I’m still using the older version of Outlook 2003, not 2007. Most of these principles transcend versions, but some may already have been addressed with 2007.
1. Use filters to weed out shit emails. Any email sent to a DL you should probably filter and put into a sub-folder within “@REVIEW” or “@ARCHIVE”. Some of these you want to read eventually, some of them only if stars align and you are given a month of free time at work and also a personal massage every morning by a Swedish masseusse. I am surprised at how many people don’t use filters. I have literally hit the limit on the number of filters I can write, including “OOO messages”, automated reports, and my weekly Thursday massage session reminder.
2. Turn off that annoying alert at the right bottom corner of the screen. It’s too distracting to have email alerts pop up every fe w minutes. Besides, that’s where sports updates are supposed to go. How dare they.
3. Set Outlook to only send / receive periodically. I’m working with 15 minutes right now. The Send part is particularly helpful. How many times have you sent that email and the split second after realise you had just forwarded a NSFW email to a few thousand colleagues including your boss and CEO? Um, me neither.
4. Color code your emails. This helps separate out the emails sent directly to you where you are the primary person to take action on the email. You are also the primary person to ignore that email from that fat dude in HR.In Outlook 2003, you just go to: Tools | Organize.
5. Utilise Tasks as your to-do list. I have followed the GTD style “dashboard” view for Outlook that allows me a good glimpse of all my tasks and calendar at all times on a separate window. I have more details on how to set Tasks and Calendar up to make this happen.
6. Utliise hotkeys. From going to Outlook from other applications to creating tasks and meetings. Keyboard hotkeys are back like neon colours and Rick Astley, yo.
7. Don’t surf the web all day.
8. Don’t IM all day about whether the Olympics should be counted based on total golds or total medals. It’s total medals, so the US won. Sorry, great-great-great-grandparents.
9. Review the task list on Fridays.
10. Change your name to Ocho Cinco. That way nobody will email you anymore and you wouldn’t have to use Outlook.
Ok, I got a bit tired at #7 and flew through the rest, but Top 10 sounds better than Top 7.
That should mostly do it for my GSD series. I may have one more post on GSD’ing your normal life, but the Outlook/work email aspect has been the most useful to me so far. GSD!