You had to jump through three or four hoops in Office 2003 and Office 2007 to add them (clicking Tools | Options | Calendar Options and then tickboxing “Show week numbers in the Month View and Date Navigator”), but fortunately Outlook 2010 makes it much easier.

Or at least, easier to explain. So, here are the three steps you need to add week numbers in Outlook 2010.

First, click File to bring up the Backstage View.

Second, click the Options button and then the Calendar button, third from top.

Third, scroll down until you see the checkbox option “Show week numbers in the month view and in the Date Navigator”. Check the checkbox.

Lo and behold, the numberless view you had before (below left) is now basking in the full glory of week numbers.

Easy? Yes indeed. But it took me about 20 minutes to find this option hiding away, because I was foolishly hunting around the Ribbon looking for the right setting.

UPDATE: The first commenter to this post, Chris, pointed out that Outlook determines the first week of the year by default as the first week that includes January 1.

But you can change this. In Calendar Options (see the second step above), you can choose between three different ways to determine the first week. See the screenshot below. However, there’s no way I know of to force Outlook into tying week 1 into your company’s financial year.

Now David Allen is a man I admire greatly, and I’m sure there are thousands of people who have converted to his way of doing things with huge success. But he advocates a “system”, a complete change in your habits, and the brutal reality is that most people can’t change their ways. And that includes me.

Instead, I seem to have arrived at a way of doing things that can be best thought of as a kludge. It doesn’t always work and it has its faults. Sometimes I drown in so much email that I want to scream, and sometimes I forget things. But in my mind it’s a 20% of the effort with 80% of the result kind of approach, so for better or worse I share it here.

The ingredients

1. Any email client. It doesn’t matter whether you use Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010 or Thunderbird.

2. A to-do list. This is anathema to David Allen, but I like having a physical to-do list where I can quickly see what needs to be done.

3. A nice big screen. You can get away with a resolution of 1,280 x 1,024 for your main screen, but don’t go lower.

4. A fast-enough computer. One that doesn’t break your thoughts every couple of seconds as it thinks about doing that thing you just asked it to do.

The key “dos”

1. Deal with any email that can be dealt with straight away. Your goal should always be to never look at a simple email twice.

2. Keep emails short. Not only are you wasting your time, you’re wasting the receiver’s time too.

3. Pick up the phone sometimes. As BT always said, it’s good to talk, especially if you need to exchange ideas or explain something complicated: phones let people ask questions you could never anticipate!

4. Switch off alerts in your email client. We all have to put up with enough interruptions in our working day without adding to the burden.

5. Keep a to-do list on your desk. While some people love electronic to-do lists, nothing matches that feeling of crossing out a completed task.

6. Create appointments as reminders. If an email comes in that needs to be dealt with in a week rather than now, convert it into an appointment on your calendar – that way you don’t need to think about it until you’re reminded.

7. Type quickly. Now I appreciate this takes time to learn, but I find it immensely useful to be able to touch-type. It’s a skill I learnt when I was about 20, and I’ve never regretted those evenings I spent with Mavis Beacon.

8. Clean out your inbox each day. I don’t always manage this, and also appreciate that not everyone likes an empty inbox as they see all the emails they’ve been sent as a handy searchable reference, but I find an empty inbox always makes me happy – even if I’ve got a dozen emails sitting in my Deferred folder.

The key “don’ts”

1. Keep an email open while you think what to do with it. By the end of the working day, it will still be sitting there. If you need more time, either close it – if you can guarantee you will get back to it – or move to a “Deferred” folder within your email client.

2. Keep Outlook, or Thunderbird, in view all the time. I used to have Outlook sitting on a second monitor, but since switching to one big screen I’ve found myself much less distracted by incoming mail.

3. CC everyone in your emails by default: do they really need to see what you’ve just written? You could be wasting their time and providing yet another reason for someone to email you.

And that’s it. For me at least. As ever, I’d be fascinated to find what other people do to keep on top of their email.

But I don’t. It’s one of a long line of messages I’ve received this morning, and it ranks right there in the middle. I don’t know why I find this so annoying – the fact that someone I’ve never met has decided what’s important to me – but I do.

Am I alone? And can someone actually think of a positive need for the High Importance button? Let me know. It’s important.

“Hi, I am looking for a program for deleting (my) sent emails over a short period of time. I have heard of such programs, but I do not know if there is one out yet/name of it.

“Ex: send an email to a person and have the message self delete over a X amount of days or hours (self set parameters). Maybe you or one of your colleague’s know. I appreciate your time and efforts.”

Now I didn’t know the answer to that one, but it forced me to do some digging and find out the answer. As ever, Outlook’s Help system is never one to give you a straight response when it can talk in riddles, but it’s all down to AutoArchiving.

Step 1: Right-click on the Sent Items folder

Step 2: Click Properties

Step 3: Select the AutoArchive tab

Step 4: Select the “Archive this folder using these settings” radio button, and then choose your settings as you desire.

Obviously, you can do exactly the same thing for any folder in Outlook.