Gallery

How to master Outlook

Posted on 11 Mar 2009 at 16:03

But the fact is that you can do all of those searches and filters yet still open Outlook to a clean plate: the only emails you'll then see are the ones you need to deal with. It may mean you adjust the way you work, but it guarantees you'll work more effectively, as you won't be distracted by emails you've already read and dealt with.

The first rule is to delete emails you don't need. The second rule - and this is one that can make a huge difference to your working life - is that, if a task (such as responding to an email) is going to take less than two minutes, then do it straight away. Catchily, Allen refers to this as the two-minute rule.

"If all you did was get the two-minute rule out of everything you do for the rest of your life then you'll thank me for the rest of your life," said Allen. Some tasks will take longer and, according to both Allen and McGhee, that means one of two things. The first is that you work out the action and then file away the email for later when you're better able to respond. By file away, we mean move the email to a folder (such as @Actions, with the @ symbol ensuring it sits at the top of your folder list).

The second is to defer. In a non-GTD world, that may mean simply ignoring the email for a while, but that doesn't clear it from your inbox. You need to move the email to another folder, such as @Deferred, and then revisit it at an allocated time. Otherwise, it will just sit in your inbox like a buzzing irritation.

Some people might choose to go through their Deferred emails once a day; others once a week. But it's vital you have a pre-arranged time, or they'll simply be forgotten.

The remaining emails in your inbox are likely to fall under a broad heading of reference. They might relate to a particular aspect of your job or a project. Either way, experiment with creating a new folder (File | New | Folder, or shortcut Ctrl + Shift + E) called Reference emails and simply moving all your "essential" emails there.

And what you'll have, blissfully, is an empty inbox. You've taken the first, vital step towards using Outlook as it should be used.

Make your actions mean something

One of the biggest problems with to-do lists is they're full of tasks that aren't possible to complete. Say you've got to set the agenda for a meeting next week. Unless you're in the fortunate position of being an autocrat, that isn't a simple task: in reality, you'll have to email other attendees to see if they have any issues they'd like to raise, go through the minutes of the previous meeting, follow up on certain action points, agree the agenda with other stakeholders, and no doubt much more besides.

As such, writing "sort out the agenda" at the top of a paper to-do list or into Tasks within Outlook isn't helpful. You need to quickly analyse the particular steps and write those down - and, if the task is at all complicated, rather than simply write them out on your daily to-do list, you should add them to a calendar.

Sally McGhee describes these tasks as Strategic Next Actions. That is, a task you can do that contributes towards your overall goals, but that you can complete in a single, simple step.

"The key to accomplishing tasks is to plan Strategic Next Actions on your calendar," writes Sally McGhee, "so you can ensure that they get completed without... missing important deadlines. My company's statistics prove that there's a 75% greater chance of a task being completed if it's scheduled on your calendar rather than tracked on your task list or in your head."