It’s because the internet has no order, but we’d like to think we do.  Guess again: using an orderly approach to storing and retrieving is similar to paying full price for airline tickets: it made sense twenty year ago but is a costly decision today.

Here’s how to file and find things in the next decade.

Bottom Up vs Top Down

Storage and retrieval ultimately fit into two methods: top down and bottom up.  A top down approach is to come up with categories, and perhaps sub-categories, and sub-sub-categories…and then to place each item in exactly one place.  For instance, my residency might be classified as United States:Maryland:Prince George’s County:College Park.  From a legal perspective that’s the only place you’d find me today.  This is how file cabinets and hard drives have been setup forever.

However, in a bottom up system, one places all items into just one bucket—that means all residents aren’t classified into countries, they just get adjectives (or tags).  They have their name and their adjectives, some of which might conflict.  For instance, I could be a resident of both DC and Maryland in a bottom up system, of both the United States and Spain.

In the physical world it would be impossible to find anything if it were all lined up next to one another, but with fast servers and intelligent algorithms, you can search for “Jared Goralnick” without having to narrow your search to any geographic criteria.  This is helpful, because I identify first with DC, second with Baltimore, and not really at all with College Park.  So if you met me you might have trouble looking me up in and old-fashioned (top-down) phonebook—you might never look in the College Park edition.

There are numerous reasons why bottom up storage and retrieval are better than top down approaches when it comes to digital information:

• When filing something, there’s only one place to put it.  Tags are optional.  No choice means a heck of a lot less time filing
• When retrieving something, it’s better to use a (very fast) search tool…rather than guessing the right folder to look in first
• If an item relates to two projects, or is from an old friend but relates to business, etc…there are times when it’s tough to know where to file…or to retrieve it.  In a bottom up system, you just archive it in one place and search for it later.  End of story
• With tagging, one can tie one item to many categories.  So something can be tied to two projects without one having to copy it into both folders

Applying Bottom Up Approaches to Email

Not everything in the world of technology is ready for a flat, bottom-up architecture.  But email is, at least if you use Gmail, Outlook 2007, or Postbox.  I presume Mail is the same (feel free to verify in the comments).  The fewer folders you have, the faster your filing and retrieval will be.

That is because these modern email clients/web email sites use search indexing, the same technology that allows sites like Google to search the web so quickly.  With Outlook you can even search within the body of the files that are attached to your emails.  And it’s all instant.

That being said, you may still want to have folders for broad categories, but if you do, I’d suggest that you ensure that you can see all the folders on the screen at the same time.  That means that if you have more than a dozen you’d probably better rethink things.  Try to have fewer than five.

You may be thinking that having fewer folders feels less organized.  But in reality there’s less to deal with: fewer places to go, fewer places to look, and less time spent filing or retrieving.

Applying Bottom Up Approaches to the Rest of Your Technology

Data is becoming more bottom-up friendly every year.  The search features in Windows have been pretty good since Vista, and get some helpful improvements in Windows 7.  Same goes for Mac’s Finder—it gets faster in Snow Leopard.

For a long time you’ve probably paid attention to metadata (which is a fancy word for the tagging taking place inside a file) for your music collection—your artist, title, track, album, and other data have been associated with your music files.  That trend is going to be carried through to everything over the next ten years.

So I’d suggest that you think seriously about it the next time you do some reorganization on your computer.  We have more files than ever before (even if they’re online).  So labeling and tagging will be more relevant.  With photos, this is especially true.  But all documents deserve better labels, not better folders.

As we’re surrounded by more and more data, bottom up filing and sophisticated searching will be the only approach for us.  We need to start shifting our mindset and getting ready for it.

You can start now, with email.

Flickr photo credit: John Pannell

The rest: an immediately practical, very readable, and quite beautiful 26-page guide that may not be available in 48 hours…

As I was working with beta testers of AwayFind, it became apparent to me that removing email interruptions and emptying our inboxes was not a technology problem.  It was one of education.  If you haven’t fully digested Getting Things Done or other time & email management systems, then it might be a challenge to really put AwayFind into practice.

Thus I wrote a guide to complement AwayFind’s technology…but the truth is that there are few mentions of AwayFind.  It’s an accessible summary of mine and many smarter people’s recommendations around email.  If you like what I write about here, this is the juiciest stuff, with pretty diagrams, too :-).

The catch?  It won’t be free after tomorrow (it may come back again, but not sure in what form…).  It’s downloadable as part of the Basic AwayFind setup process (the last step).  So if you want it, now’s your chance—just sign up for AwayFind here.

Along with getting the guide for free, the 30% discounts for being an early-adopter also end tomorrow.  So if you were considering the Professional version of AwayFind, now’s a good time to try it—after all, you won’t get charged for 30-days and can cancel anytime, so there’s nothing to lose.

I’m sorry for making what’s quite clearly a pitch here…but I feel like I’d be doing a disservice to you if I didn’t share this guide.  I’ve never been so proud of something I’ve written…and I want you to have a chance to benefit from it.  However, I don’t feel comfortable leaving it up for free indefinitely since I’ve put so much work into it.

Thanks for reading and I hope the guide helps.  You can grab it on the fifth step of the wizard here.

In the next post I promise to rant about something completely unrelated :-)!

A pet peeve of mine is receiving unprofessional email–but I realize there’s no easy way to learn the subtleties. I’m not talking about email content, but how you format and configure it. This stuff is visible to your recipients and easy to fix. If you’re not familiar with this, then that’s the point–I hope you’ll read on to improve how your email reflects upon you.

Next week I’ll tackle the much harder topic of the email content, but for now…

The From: Be Yourself

1. Put your full name in your return address. If you don’t, it will include just your email address in both your From and your recipient’s To, which is likely not helping you to be more private but is definitely not making you look any better
2. Don’t use a “Reply-to” address. Many people accidentally create a reply-to address that’s the same as From. If you don’t know why you would need a reply-to address then just don’t use it! (In Outlook that means leaving the fields blank.) A Reply-to fields removes your name from the To field when people write you back–making them look less professional and messing up the sort by From field in many email applications
3. Avoid using “on behalf of” by sending it directly from the actual account. This is a problem in particular with Gmail subscribers who send from other email accounts. Here’s more explanation and how to fix it…

The To, CC, and BCC: Respect for Names & Privacy

1. Put the full name of your recipient in the To/CC fields. While this isn’t mandatory, it’ll not only look more professional but, well, everyone loves reading their name
2. Restrict the number of names in To and CC. If there’s neither a good reason for the people you’re addressing to know one another nor a good reason to Reply All to the message, use BCC instead of To or BCC. Even if it’s just four people, it’s much more professional and respectful (send the message four separate times or run a mail merge if you want to look even better)

Response Points: Use HTML for Clarity

As a geek, I could debate the merits of plain text vs HTML mail ad infinitum, but I’ll spare you. But when you’re responding to someone point-by-point then HTML simply offers more flexibility and readability…especially if there’s likely to be another round of back and forth. Assuming that you’re responding in HTML, here are some suggestions:

1. Use white space. Press ENTER twice or use before-spacing to separate your point from the one you’re responding to. If possible, use indentation to make it even more distinct
2. Use color. As a designer I often go for subtlety, but this is all about clarity. Using color to help indicate who was responding or when in the conversation that response took place can nested conversations much easier to follow
3. Use inline responses. All of this stuff skips over the point that you should use inline conversations. If the conversation is important enough, inline responses are the easiest way to be thorough and obvious

The Signature: Customize & Minimize

I don’t think enough people adjust their email signatures–and yet it’s the one place you can be unabashedly self-advertising. I use a signature graphic of my name for business people, but with techies or internet types I don’t include it. I’ll also include different URLs depending on the recipient. Here are some ideas for you:

1. Use your full signature once in each message thread. So long as your full signature is included somewhere in the discussion, cut out some noise from the thread by thereafter using signatures that are one or two lines (i.e., your name and up to one other thing)
2. Let people know when you’re replying on a mobile device. While I recommend removing the brand from your auto-response (do I care that it was a BlackBerry vs an iPhone? no), letting people know you’re on a mobile phone when replying helps them understand if you skipped any points, made typos, or were a little less friendly. I’d prefer that you not reply from your handheld for anything of consequence, but if you must, let people know the context. (It’s a good one: you’re trying to be more responsive so you should be afforded some leeway, right?)
3. Change up your signature when appropriate. Have a few canned signatures and/or adjust your signature based on your recipient. Consider highlighting a particular link or fact based on the context

In the next week I’ll post some ideas about creating professional email content. (It will be a very different approach to Chris Brogan’s great article here.)

Got any email tips to share?

My motivation was a change in email tools, but after just a couple weeks of creating filters (taking a grand total of 15 minutes over that time), my inbox is much better than before.

Now’s your chance to do the same thing.  I’m going to talk first about Gmail and then about Outlook–the principles are the same, and the result is a lot of saved time and easier focus.

The Problem: Email that doesn’t require action

When you get lots of email, it can be daunting to make it through it all.  But you don’t need to act on a lot of that email, or at least not right now.  Much of that email just clutters your inbox, distracts your attention, and takes time from your day.  I’m not referring to spam–that’s a whole different topic (best solved through server-based solutions like Gmail, Postini, or MX Logic).  I’m referring to newsletters, shipment notifications, friend requests, event invitations–anything that you might want to look at, but that you most likely can wait a few days for.  Read on for how to keep this from your inbox…

My take on inbox quality improvement

The only things I want in my all-important inbox are what I care about today, and plan to act upon right after I read.  Generally speaking, these are unique communications from people that are sent primarily to me.  My inbox is something I clear out every day, and address all of its messages–I don’t want anything slowing me down.

The answer for me is applying filters (as Gmail, Thunderbird, or Eudora calls them) or rules (as Outlook calls them) to my messages.  Examples include (please bear in mind that I’m going to use the terminology “folder” here to refer to Google’s “labels” as well):

• All Facebook and Evite event invitations go to a social media folder
• All Twitter follows, Flickr adds, etc go to a social media folder (though I’m considering turning off all Flickr notifications…but there’ll be a whole SERIES about social media productivity in a few weeks)
• All online purchase related items go to a management folder
• Anything resembling a newsletter in anyway goes to the newsletters folder
• Anything that I probably won’t read, I immediately unsubscribe from all of their correspondence

Making it happen–what YOU need to do

Starting today: whenever you get an email, think carefully if it’s personally relevant/actionable.  If it’s not then don’t just file it away:

• Unsubscribe from that mailer if it’s a legitimate mailing that you’re just not interested in
• Create a rule/filter to prevent that type of email from ever reaching your inbox again

BE RUTHLESS. Anything resembling a newsletter or automatic notification is probably not worthy of your immediate attention–remember, things that make it to your inbox will also make it to any remote devices’ inboxes you check.  Anything that’s not sent directly to you with personal information is likely something you can deal with another time.

Rather than trying to go through old messages and create filters for them at once, spend 30 seconds to create a new filter when the need arises.  Just ask yourself every time you’re about to delete or file a message: will I be doing this again? If the answer is yes, then create a filter.

Tutorials for Outlook Rules and Gmail Filters
(example: new Twitter followers)

The following is a tutorial for creating rules in Microsoft Outlook:

(and here’s more information from Microsoft)

And here is a tutorial for creating a filter in Gmail:

(and here’s more information from Google)

My apologies that these videos are slightly cropped–the non-cropped versions are on Screencast: Gmail & Outlook. This was my first time using Jing (it rocks…but to my knowledge doesn’t provide any editing options); also, the new version of our site that we’re designing will accommodate wider blog postings.

It’s your turn

Whether or not you were familiar with creating rules/filters in the past, be very careful to ALWAYS create rules (or unsubscribe) rather than filing (or deleting) messages right away–within a month, you’ll get far fewer messages in your inbox…and thus it’ll be much easier to manage you email.

Are there any creative rules/filters that you have set up?  Had any challenges creating one?  Let us know in the comments…

In his post, which you should check out, Frank describes the AwayFind product, and references an article that’s been getting a lot of attention–Michael Arrington (of TechCrunch) discusses getting too much email.

Arrington argued that we get too much email and that he has trouble filtering out the most important messages:

I routinely declare email bankruptcy and simply delete my entire inbox. But even so, I currently have 2,433 unread emails in my inbox. Plus another 721 in my Facebook inbox. and about thirty skype message windows open with unanswered messages. It goes without saying, of course, that my cell phone voicemail box is also full

Last night, Jeremiah Owyang also complained of a similar problem in his post, Email Consumes Us:

Ironically, most of my social media peers and I still use email as one of the main ways to communicate back and forth to each other But even more, there are more inboxes to check, twitter, facebook, linkedin, I’m getting business messages from these tools and I’m sure you are too.

In an update, Owyang points out that checking email twice per day may be a great solution, and mentions tools like Xobni and ClearContext. (Both of which are presently Windows + Microsoft Outlook oriented solutions, and both of which I’ve used for extended periods and have gotten value from.)

This brings me to AwayFind–which helps to facilitate the first part of Owyang’s solution–checking email less often. That’s the only problem it solves–it doesn’t help to organize email like ClearContext, and it doesn’t provide statistics or social graph information like Xobni. It just lets you escape email by giving you the confidence that urgent messages will still reach you in other ways. This enables you to batch process your email when you finally do check it. Oh, and it can delegate emergencies to others automatically.

I have a lot of other things that I’ll eventually be sharing about AwayFind and about email intake. In the next week I plan to write a post about taking applying filters and rules seriously–and how to ELIMINATE emails before you even receive them. But in the mean time, here’s the interview from SomewhatFrank—I welcome your thoughts on getting too much email in the comments… I know that AwayFind is just one small step in that direction.

Curious about AwayFind, please sign up for our beta or follow the status on Twitter

Here are some resources for solving your email woes:

• Leo Babauta of Zen Habits [guest posting on 4HWW]: 10 Steps to Become an Email Ninja (great ideas about email elimination)
• Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero video (it’s good from the get go, but long) on processing email–I recommend grabbing the audio here and listening in your car
• And how I personally process email in Outlook (look for more on this on the blog soon)

Note: I’m making the assumption here that using Gmail to manage your domain-branded email is better than using the basic POP or IMAP provided by your ISP. The main reason I switched to Gmail is its superior server-based spam filtering and server-based rules–which means crap doesn’t ever make it to me, especially on my mobile devices.

The first feature is what’s known as Google Apps. While it’s ostensibly an online productivity suite, it includes the ability to use your own domain through Google’s Gmail system. “But wait, Jared, I’ve always been using my domain-branded email through Gmail.” No, you haven’t quite. In the past Gmail emails for your domain have looked like this (though many people don’t even bother and just used their main gmail address for replies):

Call it what you want, but this isn’t professional enough for me. Google does this to get around spam filters (see Sender IDs for a technical explantion). Once you sign up for Google Apps, you’ll be sending mail through the appropriate (SMTP) server for your domain and your email will look this:

There were two other reasons why I wouldn’t use Gmail (or any web based email system) much in the past:

1. If I worked offline or on a mobile device, there were things I couldn’t access (like filed messages) or synchronize (like filing and deleting messages)
2. The primary place for me to work with Gmail (if I wanted all the functionality) was the web. While this sounds reasonable, it meant that my offline copies were difficult to maintain. POP access (the option other than IMAP) didn’t manage folders other than the Inbox

Gmail now offers IMAP, which means that all your folders can be synchronized between the web and your email clients–any activity performed in one place will be mirrored on the others. You can even use Gmail as an archive for all the old messages you previously had only stored locally (I just moved 3gb of old mail to the Gmail server so that it’s now backed up, searchable, and available anywhere).

If you’re not using IMAP on your mobile devices, laptop, or desktop, consider switching. It’ll give you a copy of your data and many more options for working offline or on-the-go.

Signing up for Google Apps (free for up to 6.5gb) [click here]

There’s a caveat here: you need to control your own domain. If someone else is managing your domain’s DNS then you’ll have an annoying (but most likely worth it) battle getting this in place. I imagine many readers of this blog own their own domain and this is an available option. If you don’t have access to your domain and your company doesn’t use Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes, bring this up with your administrator as you can host up to 100 email accounts at 6.5gb for free! (Or $50/user/year for 25gb each)

If you own your domain, you’ll have to point your MX records to Gmail to do this right. It only takes a minute to copy and paste Google’s instructions into an email that you can send to your web host support contact, but it’s a pain. Google also provides plenty of do-it-yourself instructions, but be careful if you go that route.

Configuring your Gmail and email application(s) for IMAP [click here]

If you don’t plan to use a desktop or mobile client, IMAP doesn’t matter much for you. I do encourage you to try a program such as Outlook, Thunderbird, or Penelope/Eudora. It should be faster than Gmail and is available when you’re not online. Personally I just like the comfort of knowing my data is not only stored on the internet (as Google doesn’t offer us data reliability unless we pay $50/year).

Run into snags? Have suggestions? Let me know in the comments and I’ll try to help…

It remains to be seen exactly how ActiveSync will be implemented on the iPhone (though the Microsoft Exchange blog says that Apple’s implementation will include both HTML email and Auto Discovery for any Exchange 2007 users), but a business user will regardless benefit greatly from automatic (“push”) wireless synchronization of the following:

• Email
• Calendar
• Contacts
• Global Address List

As you can see, ActiveSync is superior to IMAP in that it handles more than just email. And personally I prefer ActiveSync over BlackBerry and GoodLink technologies because only ActiveSync is available at no additional cost with a Microsoft Exchange server. (GoodLink and RIM BlackBerry both require custom software/servers.) ActiveSync is out of the box functionality that many more businesses support.

While wireless synchronization is a highly desired feature of business users, ActiveSync’s Mobile Device Policy is the selling point for IT administrators. At the server level, an Exchange administrator can invoke the following two settings:

• Password Requirements – after a designated period of inactivity, a user can be required to enter a password (of designated complexity) on their device [I have not yet confirmed that this feature will be on the iPhone, but I'm guessing it will]
• Remote Device Wipe – at will, an administrator can wipe all the data from a device. If the device is stolen or an employee fired, this helps to ensure that proprietary data is removed [confirmed]

(Note: there is speculation as to whether all music/videos would be wiped. I don’t feel it matters since that data will all be synchronized regularly in iTunes anyhow.)

Mobile Device Policy and wireless synchronization are very compelling features for a business interested in iPhones. These will no doubt further iPhone adoption, but there are still other barriers:

• Lack of keyboard – the iPhone is not a fast communications tool for those who type a lot (writing emails, not just reading them) on their mobile devices
• Price – the iPhone is more expensive than BlackBerry devices and most existing Windows Mobile devices
• Carrier support – AT&T is not the dominant cellular brand of corporations. When the iPhone is available to Verizon customers in the US, we can expect much more widespread business adoption
• Data transfer – the iPhone still does not offer a high speed internet option–neither AT&T’s HSDPA nor Verizon/Sprint’s faster EVDO

When ActiveSync support is (hopefully) released in June, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. New business applications (developed with the SDK that’s released at the same time) may offer additional value, as well. I’ll keep you apprised of any updates (feel free to subscribe via RSS or email) in the meantime.

I ran into an old acquaintance at a business function who suggested getting together. In each email correspondence he missed something I said earlier in the message thread, forcing me to repeat myself and him to respond to many more emails. The worst part: though we both restated the date numerous times in the message, he showed up on the wrong day. When I notified him on the day-of our meeting (which was a week later) he had to cancel because he never realized that he was at fault all along and at that point didn’t have the date available. It was both a laughable taste of his own medicine and doubly frustrating for me.

This is not the first time something like this has occurred (I have so many more stories, and I’m sure you do, too). So here’s my advice, with a smattering of both productivity tips and etiquette:

1. Limit your PDA/BlackBerry correspondence to when you must respond to those messages immediately. While it may seem to you like you’re processing email on the go, the BlackBerry medium lends itself to emails that are of a much lower quality than the message you could write in the same amount of time from a computer. Don’t let your audience suffer at the hands of your perceived-productivity
2. Don’t read your email until you’re ready to process it. Read each email once and then take action on it. If you don’t think you’ll be able to deal with it now then don’t even read it. Better yet, turn off your email until you’re ready to process all of it at once
3. When scheduling appointments, be thorough. Offer a first choice and then a couple other options, and be specific about the date of the month, time of day, and location. When they present you options, READ the options carefully–there’s nothing more frustrating than suggesting a date that the person already excluded (this happens ALL the time)
4. If you want something resolved, put it in its own email as its own topic. People are poor with responding to multiple items in an email and are more likely to wait a long time before responding or to let some topics slip by. (This ties in with titling each message with an appropriate subject, as well)
5. Don’t make them work for no reason. If they suggest a place to meet (and it’s easily google-able), don’t ask for directions or even an address–look it up and confirm it with them. Nothing bugs me more than people using me for a search engine. Better yet, people appreciate when you respect their time and save them the trouble (There are exceptions like campuses and far-away cities, but generally speaking…)

I’m going to respect your time and limit this to five tips. The general point here is that you can make your recipient feel respected while you process your email quickly. Don’t abuse their time or yours by rushing.

My approach to personal information management comes from a few sources:

1. From Getting Things Done (GTD) I learned that you need to trust your productivity system to keep you in check, so that you don’t have to second-guess things (did I write back? don’t I have an appointment soon? etc.)
2. In The Four Hour Workweek (4HWW), Tim provided additional motivation that the world isn’t going to end if you delay responding to inputs, and that you should do everything in your power to batch your responsibilities (or better yet, outsource them, but that’s not for this post)
3. I like holding onto things long after I probably should, so I need some sort of super fast filing & retrieval system (while still keeping out of site the things that are no longer relevant)
4. I will not check many places to keep track of things, so I need everything organized in as few screens/programs as possible

Let’s start with the setup: In the morning my Microsoft Outlook is set to Work Offline; when I am online, all email notifications are disabled.

My portable device: I have a Motorola Q that synchronizes via ActiveSync. I can literally type an address into an appointment and by the time I’m in the car that address will be sync’d to my phone so I can enter it into the GPS. Reminders and everything else in Outlook (except notes) are also in live sync. No iPhone for me (yet).

The only way I can really think of to begin this is with the beginning. And I can’t help but to recommend Steve Pavlina’s How to Get Up Right Away article for that–much as I enjoy my warm bed, I also hate the idea of wasting the morning away. After getting up quickly (and I am NOT a morning person), I go for a run with Dagny the dog, eat breakfast over the Washington Post (sorry, Tim)…and then off to work for 9:00 or so (which on a lucky day like today means just walking to the office in the next room). And now, back to Outlook.

Come to think of it, my day doesn’t really begin in the morning. As GTD points out and 4HWW drills in, you should never sit in front of your computer without something specific you want to accomplish. Here’s my morning, for example, as laid out last night before I went to bed (sometimes I’ll plan things earlier, but usually not unless I have specific appointments).

This point also takes additional notice. Whatever I do before lunch is something that takes thought. And I try in earnest never to schedule calls or appointments during this time. Calls and emails are for the afternoon. The exception is for when I’m out of the office, in which case I try to fill the entire day with appointments in that city (and I mean this for both far-away travel and local travel). My motivation for blocking out the morning for thought-intensive solo (or with co-worker) activities is twofold:

1. As soon as I check my email, which is at noon or so, my day is going to take on a new direction. I’d rather not think about any of that stuff and work on something I need to do. Hopefully something business development oriented or billable
2. Biorhythms. At 3:00 in the afternoon I want to go to sleep. After lunch, in general, my energy is low. When I have processor power I want to focus and use it–and that power is present for me in the morning

At around noon I let the personal and work email flow in. For personal email I use Eudora (as I’ve been using it for about twelve years), and for work I use Outlook 2007 with Exchange 2003. For the next half hour I try to clear my email to zero–by responding, scheduling time around, or assigning tasks related to all the messages. For instance, I might block out later in the day for some revisions on a technical documentation project, I might assign a proposal design and automation contract we just won to Keith (using Basecamp and setting a milestone), or I might schedule a couple calls for various days by creating tasks on those days in the Tasks area (see the bottom of the picture above and Using the Outlook 2007 daily Task list in my last article). With any luck, my email is empty and it’s lunchtime.

Some quick notes:

• Things for myself to do later: All of the tasks and appointments that I create use the Reminder feature in Outlook. While I do NOT want to be notified of new emails (things I didn’t plan for), I DO like to be notified of tasks and appointments–this way I don’t have to think about them much until I’m reminded of them. In the afternoon I tend to look at the calendar/task list a lot, but for anything time-specific or important I’ll set a reminder. Similarly, it’s very important to never leave too many reminders in the Outlook Reminders window–too many reminders is the same thing as no reminders at all–you’ll stop paying attention to them.
• Filing: I don’t believe it should take thought or time to file things. The purpose should be to just get them out of site. I have a few very broad places for filing: Correspondence, Internal, and Management are the main ones I use (there are a few others). Correspondence relates to anything with a client, prospect, or anyone that doesn’t work for me that’s work-related and possibly significant. Internal relates to anything from an employee or contractor. And Management relates to stuff that needs to be held onto but is not of a correspondence/personal-nature, for instance: receipts, confirmations, timecards, etc.
• Retrieving my filings: Outlook 2007 has full text search built-in, so sometimes I search within the particular folder where I most likely filed the message. However, more often I just use the Windows Desktop Search (built into Vista, but freely available for XP) to find messages.

After lunch my day often takes on a new shape. Chances are I have a few calls scheduled for specific times and a bunch that I have to make at some point–following up on projects, checking in on proposals, etc. Some days I’ll turn off sending and receiving email after lunch. Other days I won’t–it really depends on how much distraction-free thought I need. For instance, if I have a lot of little things to deal with then I’ll leave my email running. If, however, I need to focus on more intensive tasks then I’ll shut it off.

Another point about biorhythms here: phone calls and email are easy for me as they don’t require too much energy. Phone calls have another party on the line so I feel I have to stay focused (large conference calls are a different matter–those I just try to avoid). Email is easy because I simply hate leaving things unfinished. As such, the afternoon is a good time for me to deal with them.

By around 4:30 or so I’ll try to hit another round of emails (if I’d had them turned off). And by around 6:00 I usually put Dagny out for some frisbee and call it a day. Inevitably I’ll probably do something work-related later in the evening, but since I feel like it’s now my time I’m not so concerned with focus and frequently are doing other things at this time. (To be honest, I go out just about every night–dancing, dinner, concerts, etc.).

Before I go to bed I’ll often do one more round of email checking, depending on my mood. I’ll also lay out in my calendar my plans for the morning based on my existing task list in Outlook and/or milestones in Basecamp.
Some other notes:

• I don’t use an out-of-office auto-response letting people know when I check my email. In my line of work (a business owner / technology consultant in the Microsoft Office space), I don’t see the need to be super responsive if I’m going to get back to them within 24 hours anyways (in my experience, people who don’t have a system take a lot longer to write back)
• I manage my personal information in Outlook. We manage our company calendars and contacts with Exchange. We manage our projects and general responsibilities in Basecamp.
• My employees sometimes work from home and sometimes come to the office–it really depends on our needs. This doesn’t relate too much to this article, except to point out that much of the day I’m not getting distracted by coworkers
• When my coworkers need me, we use IM first and phone second. If it’s not pressing we stick to Basecamp messages and general email

I’m not going to pretend that every day is like this. I try to spend as many days as possible at the office, but usually spend at least one or two days with clients and prospects. I’m doing everything I can to keep my work virtual, however, because I like the life. Hopefully some of these tips will help you on your way to better time management…and hopefully help us to take more days off, too.

For Part 1 of this series, click here. To subscribe to my blog, which is all about productivity and social media hacks, choose RSS or email delivery.

Given that I’m supposed to be an “efficiency trainer” and my platform is Microsoft Office, I run into a lot of people complaining about how difficult and counterintuitive Microsoft Outlook is. The Outlook as we know it has gone through six versions since Windows 95, and there have been a lot of productivity-enhancements . I don’t believe that one needs to use to-do list managers, web based calendars or external RSS readers to stay on top of their life. Not to say that they’re not all valuable in their own right, but if you’re already spending a lot of time in Outlook then it can be helpful to keep things in one place.

In the first segment of this Outlook series (this article), you’ll find two ways to get your time-consuming emails into your task list (one way for Outlook 2000-2007 and one for just Outlook 2007). These should help to get your Inbox to empty and allow you to perform your tasks when you need to–without having to stare at not-yet-relevant messages. In my next post I’ll mention how this relates to my personal application of The Four Hour Workweek‘s email management ideas.

The following two techniques are based on the assumption that something you can’t respond to now would be better filed away as a task to deal with later, when you’re reminded to perform it.

Creating tasks based on emails — applicable to most versions of Outlook

To create an email based on a task, just drag it from your Inbox to the Tasks folder. The subject of the email will appear in the task subject and the body of the email will appear in the task body. Assign it a Due date, and ensure that a Reminder is set for when you’ll want to begin working on it. Then Save and Close the task.

The email will still be in your Inbox, but you can now file it away or delete it. Just be aware that any attachments are still stored in the email and not in the task.

Using the Outlook 2007 daily Task list

In Outlook 2007, Microsoft seriously improved the ways tasks can be viewed. In the method above you would still need to go to the Tasks portion of Outlook or look at your compact To Do List in the calendar area (which didn’t quite cut it for me). But in Outlook 2007, you now can see your To Do items directly beneath the calendar information for that particular day. And if you don’t complete something on Monday, it rolls over to Tuesday. Note how the task we created above is now listed in the Task list for Thursday, July 5th:

It doesn’t look too exciting from this screenshot, but in higher resolution you really get a powerful picture of your tasks for the day or an entire week, without cluttering up your calendar with fake appointments that are not time-specific. For instance, I set all my phone calls to go off as reminders at 2pm and list them in that area. You might not choose to set reminders for some tasks as you begin to rely on this list.

What makes this even easier is that you can use the new flags in Outlook 2007 to set a due date for an email without having to go through the trouble of creating a task. (Note: email flags behaved somewhat differently but did exist in previous versions of Outlook).

To create a To Do item (they’re not called Tasks here–it’s confusing, but not important) for an email, just right click in the flag area of a message and choose Add Reminder…. In a matter of seconds you’ll have the email set to a date when you want to do deal with it. Then you can file it as you please.

Why Bother?

I’m not suggesting that one has to use Outlook to manage their life…but many of us have a reason to already spend a lot of time in Outlook (usually because of workplace requirements). I think that if you’re going to be looking at an application many times a day, you can make the best use of that time. Similarly, if you add additional applications to your routine then you’re increasing the risk of missing something when you don’t check that application.

In my next post, I’ll talk about some specific techniques for how I use Outlook over the course of the day to stay on top of things…

For Part 2 of this series, click here. To subscribe to my blog, which is all about productivity and social media hacks, choose RSS or email delivery.