Welcome! How to Navigate this Course Click the colored tabs on the top of the page to move to another section of the course.

Transcription

1 Welcome! What is Pay It Forward Management (PIFEM)? This book outlines a suggested way to help you manage your , tasks and priorities in Outlook It happens to be the way that I manage my Outlook Inbox and my tasks in general. The course will take about 30 minutes to complete - including setting up Outlook for the appropriate setting. Hopefully you'll find it of some use. Cheers, Ian Palangio The Pay It Forward idea is from the Kevin Spacey movie Pay it Forward there is one key premise to this course: IF YOU DECIDE TO TRY THE APPROACH OUTLINED IN THIS BOOK, AND YOU ACTUALLY FIND IT USEFUL, YOU HAVE TO PAY IT FORWARD AND TELL 3 OR MORE OTHER PEOPLE ABOUT IT AND GET THOSE PEOPLE TO CONSIDER TRYING THE APPROACH. IF THIS INFORMATION IS TRUELY USEFUL, THE CONCEPT WILL SPREAD. IF THIS INFORMATION IS NOT TRUELY USEFUL, THE CONCEPT WILL DIE A NATURAL DEATH. How to Navigate this Course Click the colored tabs on the top of the page to move to another section of the course. Click the tabs on the right side of the page to get to the details of each section. Going to a Specific Topic On page two of the Start Here tab is a Table of Contents. Click the topic link in the TOC to go to that specific page. Note: Like in Internet Explorer, use the Back button to return to the page you were on previously. Searching this Notebook As you spend time working with this and Task management method, you may find that you want to reference items in this notebook. Using the search box in the upper right hand corner of your screen, you can easily search this notebook or your entire set of notebooks. Flagging Action Items As you go through this course, you will notice a number of action items you should complete on the job while you complete the course. To ensure follow up on these, you can create Outlook tasks that will link to your notes. At any point in the notebook where you see an item that you want to flag, use the Task menu on the Standard toolbar to create an Outlook task (or use the Ctrl+Shift+1 quick key).

2 Table of Contents Tuesday, 11 December :04 PM Start here Welcome! General Information Notes History Definition of E mail Notes Traditional Use Use Today is Asynchronous Getting Things Done Notes Paper Task Management Ian's Old Way of Task Management Notes End User Experience PIFEM PIFEM in Action 1 PIFEM in Action 2 PIFEM in Action 3 PIFEM in Action 4 PIFEM in Action 5 Tips How to Configure Outlook 2007 for PIFEM Configure Outlook 2007 Inbox (To Be Vetted) Follow up (Today) Follow up (Later) Inbox (Completed) Change Your Default View GO! Feedback Feedback

3 General Information Tuesday, 11 December :05 PM General Information Welcome. This OneNote book has been created to provide some ideas and a suggested approach of using Outlook 2007 features to help you manage your growing volume of and tasks each day. The content for this course has come from a number of sources. The main ones being discussions, ideas, and process refining with my colleagues Angus Logan and Johann Kruse. This happens to be a way that I use Outlook 2007 to manage my and tasks. Personally, I receive approximately 400 s a day, plus RSS feeds and Task items. In the end, I only need to action about 100 of these per day. The concepts covered in this course are what I use daily to keep on top of these, and help me prioritise. I hope you find some of these concepts useful - and a baseline that we can work on improving this system further. Cheers Ian Palangio Business Productivity Solution Specialist Microsoft Australia ianpal@microsoft.com The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play. Arnold J. Toynbee "I do not like work even when someone else does it." Mark Twain

4 Notes Tuesday, 11 December :05 PM

5 Use Today Tuesday, 11 December :11 PM Traditionally, people receive too many s to handle well each day. In an ideal world, each person would finish the day and go to bed each night with their Inbox empty and all tasks complete. But has a serious flaw to make this a reality and this problem is those items that need to be Date/Time Actioned. 1) 2) 3) 4) You may be aware of the "4 D's of Management". This basically means that for each you receive you have to do one of 4 things with it... Sometime...Eventually... Delete it = it isn't relevant to you or should be deleted after a quick scan/read Do it = Do it now before you read the next . Any item that takes less than 2 minutes to complete should be done now, or is significantly important or interesting to put to the top of your priority list. 2 minutes is about how long it takes to manage it for Date/Time Action below so you might as well get on with it and Do It now! Delegate it = Have somebody else do it so forward on the request Date/Time Action it = This is the problem scenario to manage! (Some people call this Defer) Not all s can be actioned immediately, nor should they be. It may be an related to checking on a status of something a month from now, or will take a significant amount of time that needs to be reserved in your calendar etc. Because of these types of items to be deferred in your inbox you can not go to bed with an empty inbox. Most people take the approach that outstanding mails would be marked as "Unread" and hopefully checked again tomorrow. But most become buried in the sea of incoming s the next day and lost or not actioned. This course is really about providing a way to manage these items that require Date/Time Action or Deferring.

6 is Asynchronous Tuesday, 11 December :34 PM One of the misconceptions about is that people think it is synchronous. That is, many expect immediate responses to the they send. This is not how works - IS ASYNCHRONOUS. Something I learned from Johann Kruse is to treat like an asynchronous tool. In the past I found I was constantly distracted with the new coming into my Inbox every couple of minutes with a notification pop-up, sound, and "new mail" icon in my system tray. I would then move away from my highest priority item I was working on, and read that newsletter or that just came in. I now only check twice a day. First thing in the morning, and last thing in the day/evening. During the day I try not to constantly check for new items. I recently received an from a records manager who included in her signature that she only checks at 9:30am and 4:30pm - and to call her if a fast answer was required. I wrote her back and congratulated her on her approach to - I thought it was the great! For those that work with me, they know that calling me, or sending an instant message is best for fast/immediate answers. If you need an immediate response - is not a good choice for the question. To assist with removing the distraction of new , I have turned off the following Desktop Alert features of Outlook 2007 on my computer: New Mail Notifications (the toast such as the following) New Mail Icon in the system Tray Sound notification for new items To Turn off alerts On the Tools menu of Outlook 2007, click Options. On the Preferences tab, click Options, and then click Advanced E- mail Options. Under When new items arrive in my Inbox, clear the Display a New Mail Desktop Alert (default Inbox only) check box. Note To suppress other notifications such as playing sounds, changing the mouse pointer, or displaying an envelope icon in the notification area, clear

7 the Play a sound, Briefly change the mouse cursor, or Show an envelope icon in the notification area check box, respectively.

8 Getting Things Done Tuesday, 11 December :02 PM Getting Things Done A book by David Allen called Getting Things Done (commonly abbreviated as GTD) is based on his research about Task Management. One of his tenants is to move tasks out of mind and record them somewhere. Then you can prioritise and work on tasks in an appropriate way without the noise of a cluttered inbox/task list. His approach to tasks is similar to the approach in this course and so may be worthwhile looking into further. Also, Microsoft has a free online audio training course for how to use some of the information categorisation features of Outlook It can be found at AssetID=RC

9 Notes Tuesday, 11 December :11 PM

10 Ian's Old Way of Task Management Tuesday, 11 December :03 PM In the late 1990's I took a Time Management course in Ottawa, Canada. Unfortunately I don't remember who gave the course, or what theory they were practicing. But I do remember a few of the key concepts, and I have implemented them in my daily life since then(especially when daily life gets hectic). I'll outline those key concepts I remember and actually use: 1) 2) 3) The course I took was not about Time Management - it was about Self Management. No matter how good you think you are - you can only work on one single thing at any one time. And that one thing you decide to work on is the highest priority item to you at that time. Somehow in your decision making process you have come to the conclusion that the particular item is the highest priority possible. If you go to the kitchen to get a cup of tea - you have decided at that exact moment getting tea is the most important/highest priority item for you. That is fine - you do need to fit breaks, handle smaller tasks around other significant ones throughout the day. The main point is that you can only work on one item at a time - and this course helps you define what the Highest Priority item is for that moment. During the course I took back in the 1990's, we learned to manage tasks on paper in the following way: i) ii) iii) iv) v) vi) vii) viii) First thing in the morning, take 5 minutes and write down all your outstanding tasks on a piece of paper Rank each task with the following letters a. A - is the urgent and important items that need to be taken care of b. B - is the medium and semi-important tasks c. C - is the low priority items that are not urgent nor important. The "A's" are the tasks that need to be completed first. Rank all the A's with a number 1, 2, 3,... And down through the B's and C's too. Your Priority list is now ranked as A1, A2,...An, B1, B2,... Bn, C1, C2,... Cn. Complete you tasks in order throughout the day in the order they are in your list, and add new ones as they come up Always carry your paper task list with you to meetings etc to have it handy. The next morning, start over. Take 5 minutes and write down all outstanding tasks and rank them as A, B and C, etc... On paper, a task list would look something like the above with Priorities rated and listed in the left column 4) 5) For me, this system worked really well when there was lots of tasks to manage. Once the list was written out and everything ranked - it was very easy to concentrate only on the A1 task until it was done. Then move on to the next task... BUT - I was not able to replicate this way of managing tasks and s in Outlook 2003 easily. Then - Outlook 2007 came along with additional task management features that allowed me to implement this system electronically to manage: a. b. Tasks

11 c. RSS Feeds

12 Notes Tuesday, 11 December :32 PM

13 PIFEM in Action 1 Tuesday, 11 December :03 PM When you implement the techniques from this course, the End User Experience will be similar to the next 5 tabs of "PIFEM In Action". Screen shots and a description of how to process the is given. It s a new morning and I login to Outlook items are in the inbox. These are all from the last time I checked last night. I need to quickly go through these and vet them into my prioritisation task list. Starting from the bottom/oldest mail message Triage them using the 4 D s of Management For the bottom message with the subject Sales Statements in Q2 Report" received from Katie Jordon I ll read the Word attachment in the Preview pane on the right and determine it is not something I want to keep and quickly DELETE the .

14 You could use the Conversation view (right click on the column headers and say arrange by Conversation), this will group all of the s with the same subject together. The next in my list was sent to a number of people in an Distribution list. It is titled "Potential Blue Yonder Airlines Sale and asks a question about the legal requirements of the sale. After reading the message in the Preview Pane I do not know the answer to this so I DELETE it. (If the message contained an answer, I d file it away in my Legal archive folder for later reference). Next steps are that I read and delete a number of the next s too. John Kane responded to the question about the Blue Yonder Airlines Sale. Because this contains an answer to the question, I

15 would like to keep it for future reference. I read it, then Move it (using Ctrl+Shift+V) to my Archive Folders.PST so I can search for this later if I need to. I read/move/file and delete more . Accept or decline some meeting requests as I move through the Inbox.

16 Continued on the Next Page PIFEM in Action 2

17 PIFEM in Action 2 Tuesday, 11 December :19 PM I am now on an that is about John's Birthday on Friday. I need to get a gift for John in time for his party. This is not something I can Do Now, so I will Date/Time Action it for tomorrow. Tomorrow is an appropriate day to do this as I have very few commitments so I will flag it to be actioned tomorrow and not worry about it until then. To do this I complete the following: 1) Right click the message and assign it an Outlook Category. I have a Category non urgent items called A2 and is coloured Yellow. I ll Categorise it there. It now appears in my Inbox with an Yellow Category. We ll get back to this categorisation and why it is important later...

18 Now, I will flag it to be actioned tomorrow. Right click the Flag column and choose Tomorrow: It now disappears from your Inbox automatically, and won t show up in my task list until tomorrow. More about how this works later... Continue this course in the next page of this book section PIFEM in Action 3

19 PIFEM in Action 3 Tuesday, 11 December :23 PM I am a member of the Australian National Curling sports team, and I have received some s related to that. I have a purple category for curling items. I categorise all my curling s by selecting them all at once and assign them to my curling Category I now also flag the selected curling s as due Today I ll work on them at home after business hours. They now disappear automatically from my Inbox. Continue on the next page of this book PIFEM in Action 4

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21 PIFEM in Action 4 Tuesday, 11 December :25 PM The next requests me to follow up on actions from a Sales Meeting. This is not something I can do immediately but is very important to my job so I will Date/Time Action it. Today is an appropriate day to do this as it is Urgent and Important so I will flag it to be completed today. To do this I complete the following: It now appears in my Inbox with an Black "!Urgent and Important" Category. We ll get back to this categorisation and why it is important later... Now, I will flag it to be actioned and due Today. Right click the Flag column and choose Today:

22 It now disappears from your Inbox automatically, and won t show up in my task list until tomorrow. More about how this works later... Notice though, that is did automatically appear in your ToDo Bar and is due today. And you will also see that John's Birthday gift is in the ToDo bar and is due tomorrow. I also have RSS feeds appearing in my Inbox this isn't default behaviour but we'll configure for this in the next section. RSS feeds are treated just like and I can assign rules, categories and due date flag s to them. I don t want to read this one right now... so I categorise it as A2 and flag it due This Week.

23 I continue to do the 4 D s(replying to s as I can, delegating, deleting/filing or categorising/flagging) until the Inbox is empty. Now, I can worry about just the tasks/ s that are due to be actioned today not the ones due tomorrow or later. This picture below of an empty Inbox. This, my friends, gives you a really good feeling. Now... don't check your Inbox again until the end of the day. Not living in your Inbox will be tough but give it a try. OK so now what? Continue on PIFEM in Action 5

24 PIFEM in Action 5 Tuesday, 11 December :30 PM There is a number of different views available in Outlook to help you work through those tasks/ s that are due today. Click on the Follow up (Today) folder from the Favorite Folders list to see them. When you view this search folder sort by Category to put high priority items at the top of the list as shown below in the diagram. This view shows only s, tasks and RSS feeds due today or earlier (Outlook does a great job of rolling forward tasks that are overdue. The Overdue ones will appear as Red!). In this view above I have 13 outstanding items due today, which is an unreasonable number. I could go through this list, and re categorise and assign new due dates to be more realistic for the items. But, they are already in a prioritised list so recategorising is not necessary. From the process of Categorising and Flagging I have 4 items listed as Urgent and Important that are due today. I need to work on these first before getting to lower priority items in A1, A2, B, Curling, etc. Perhaps you have flagged a single item with multiple categories like Urgent and Important and also Conference. These multiple category items will show up in each category view which is a great feature! Once an item in the list is finished, Mark it Complete by right clicking on the flag and selecting Mark Complete. This will remove it from all the views of outstanding items.

25 I also have another view that shows tasks sorted by Due Date and grouped by Importance and Category. It is just another view on the items and another way of looking at the items flagged and categorised in the Inbox. This other view looks like: A nice feature is that your Outlook Task list also keeps track of these s flagged with due dates and categories, and they also show up in the To Do Bar:

26 And don t forget that you can always drag one of these tasks to your calendar to assign specific times in your calendar to action it. Another great feature of Outlook 2007 which allows you to easily, say, add an appointment from 9am to 2pm on a given day for a long RFP response etc. So the summary is that there is a number of working folder views that get configured in . The Actual Inbox is still running in the background holding all of these s and RSS items. But, I never look at or work in the actual Inbox it becomes a Mess of categories, Flags, and Marked Complete ticks as shown below with some of them marked complete, and other still needing attention: Every once in a while you will need to clean out the normal Inbox (as above). You can do this on a plane sometime it doesn t take long. Look at the full Inbox and delete the items, file them into customer folders, archive them, whatever makes sense for you for old items. OK so how do you set all this stuff up! The configuration steps are in the next Section Configure Outlook 2007

27 Tips Tuesday, 11 December :49 PM Other tips to consider Press Alt+F1 to make the Folders Pane disappear and Alt+F1 to have it displayed when you need it. This is a very easy way to give you more real estate on the screen as you process . Try it to see what it does and if you like it - it is particularly useful if you find yourself changing the width of the Inbox or Preview Pane regularly. In addition, if you want to get quickly back to the Inbox from another folder, all it takes is a quick Ctrl+Shift+I. Subscribe to the blog for ongoing management ideas. If you are a quick-key fan, to mark an as complete you can use the following keystrokes ALT-H-W-M and then ALT-SPACE-C to close it. A suggestion is that you create a folder called 'completed' and then archive that folder monthly into another folder (not to your PST); this will help give you an indication of your workload. If you with an action associated - put the people who are meant to respond on the TO line, anyone else is CC; if someone is required to know but shouldn't be in future conversations BCC them and call it out in the beginning of the [BCC'ing ianpal] If you add someone to the thread add them and call it out in the body [CC pwilliam as FYI] or [CC pwilliam re below] and highlight the key statement you want this person to look at. If you have a long thread highlight the key elements in that thread; When responding to a thread say "inline" and then highlight your comments with a the same colour as "inline" this will make your comments stand out and easily visible.

28 Notes Tuesday, December 11, :06 PM

29 Configure Outlook 2007 Tuesday, 11 December :03 PM 1) Create categories and colours that make sense to you. You can have any number of them. Here is a basic introduction to categories in Outlook The specific ways to setup Outlook for PIFEM are in the next pages of this section of this book. Color categories allow you to easily identify and group associated items in Microsoft Office Outlook. Assign a color category to a group of interrelated items such as notes, contacts, appointments, and messages so that you can quickly track and organize them. You can also assign more than one color category to items. The category colors are prominently displayed in table views, such as your Inbox, and within the open items themselves. You can rename the categories to something more meaningful to you or choose different colors for the categories. This flexibility enables you to design a color category system that fits your personal work style. A Categorized Mail search folder has been added to Search Folders in the Navigation Pan and provides a view of all your categorized mail items. Within this folder, you can sort and group the categorized items. a. On the Outlook toolbar, click the Categorize button. b. Click All Categories. For reference, I use the following categories:!urgent and Important = Must do today and are important. The! Puts this at the top of the list alphabetically. I made the colour Black. A1 = any matter that involves a customer or partner. This is Red. A2 = any matter that is internally to Microsoft and is generally lower priority than customer/partner matters. This is Yellow. B = Low Priority which I may or may not get to. Considered optional. This is Green. Conference = anything related to Tech.Ed, Tech.Ready, Partner Conference, etc. This is Dark Orange. zcurling = Personal items related to curling. The "z" puts it at the bottom of the list. This is Purple.

30 c. Click New. The Add New Category dialog box opens. d. e. In the Name box, type a name for the new color category. Click the arrow next to Color, click the color that you want, and then click OK. (Choosing a shortcut key is optional.) 2) Create a number of Search Folders that you will actually work with to give all the useful views on your Inbox. You will need to create 4 major Search Folders as outlined in the next 4 pages of this book: Inbox (To Be Vetted) Follow up (Today) Follow up (Later) Inbox (Completed) A Search Folder is a virtual folder that provides a view of all items that match specific search criteria. For example, the Unread Mail Search Folder allows you to view all unread messages from one location even though the messages may be located in different Mail folders. Create the custom Search Folder for Inbox (To Be Vetted) In Mail, on the File menu, point to New, and then click Search Folder. Tip To open the New Search Folder dialog box, press CTRL+SHIFT+P. Click Create a custom Search Folder. Under Customize Search Folder, click Choose. Type a name for your custom Search Folder. Click Criteria, select the options that you want, and then click OK. Click Browse, select the folders that you want to be searched, and then click OK three times.

31 Click to create a custom Search Folder. Click to open the Custom Search Folder dialog box. Click to name your Search Folder. Click to specify the search criteria. Tip To change the criteria for a Search Folder, right-click the folder, click Customize this Search Folder, click Criteria, and then change the criteria. The criteria of Search Folders in the Reading Mail group cannot be changed.

32 Inbox (To Be Vetted) Wednesday, 12 December :10 AM We will create a new Search Folder called Inbox (To be Vetted) to act as your Inbox from now on. You will not use your regular Inbox anymore. From the Search Folders folder of Outlook 2007, Right Click and select New Search Folder. Name it: Inbox (To Be Vetted) Click the Criteria button to set a filter for what items are viewed.

33 Click the More Choices tab. Check the Only Items Which check box. Select have no flag in the drop down list box. Click OK. Click the Browse button to choose which folders to select from. Select your Inbox, and all of your RSS Subscriptions folders managed in Outlook (You will probably want to Uncheck the Search subfolders option) Click OK and Click OK to return to Outlook. Drag the newly created Inbox (To Be Vetted) folder to the Favorite Folders list.

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35 Follow up (Today) Wednesday, 12 December :19 AM We will create a new Search Folder called Follow up (Today) to act as your Task List for things due today or that are overdue. From the Search Folders folder of Outlook 2007, Right Click and select New Search Folder. Name it: Follow up (Today) Click the Criteria button to set a filter for what items are viewed. Click the Advanced tab. Add the following Criteria to match the diagram below: Due Date on or before [today] Flag Status not equal to Completed

36 Click OK. Click the Browse button to choose which folders to select from. Select your Inbox, and all of your RSS Subscriptions folders managed in Outlook Click OK and Click Ok to return to Outlook. Drag the newly created Follow up (Today) folder to the Favorite Folders list.

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38 Follow up (Later) Wednesday, 12 December :19 AM We will create a new Search Folder to act as your Task List for things due today from now on. From the Search Folders folder of Outlook 2007, Right Click and select New Search Folder. Name it: Follow up (Later) Click the Criteria button to set a filter for what items are viewed. Click the Advanced tab. Add the following Criteria to match the diagram below: Due Date on or after [tomorrow] Flag Status not equal to Completed

39 Click OK. Click the Browse button to choose which folders to select from. Select your Inbox, and all of your RSS Subscriptions folders managed in Outlook Click OK and Click Ok to return to Outlook. Drag the newly created Follow up (Later) folder to the Favorite Folders list.

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41 Inbox (Completed) Wednesday, 12 December :20 AM We will create a new Search Folder to act Completed Tasks list. Once in a while you will need to look at this view and file/delete the items in the list. From the Search Folders folder of Outlook 2007, Right Click and select New Search Folder. Name it: Inbox (Completed) Click the Criteria button to set a filter for what items are viewed.

42 Click the Criteria button to set a filter for what items are viewed. Click the Advanced tab. Add the following Criteria to match the diagram below: Flag Status equals Completed Click OK and Click Ok to return to Outlook. Drag the newly created Inbox (Completed) folder to the Favorite Folders list.

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44 Change Your Default View Wednesday, 12 December :28 AM Now that we have moved our "Inbox" to be "Inbox (To Be Vetted)" we should make this the default view when you open Outlook On the Tools menu, click Options. Click the Other tab, and then click Advanced Options. Under General Settings, next to the Startup in this folder box, click Browse. In the Select Folder dialog box, select the Inbox (To Be Vetted) you want to appear when you start Microsoft Outlook. It will look like this:

45 GO! Wednesday, 12 December :41 AM Well done! You now have some the theory behind the Pay It Forward Management and also some guidance on how to setup Categories and Search folders to work with it in Outlook Go back and review the step by step instructions provided in End User Experience - PIFEM to use these tools and approaches to manage your and tasks. After you use this system for a week or so you will really understand what is happening in the background and you can continue to refine your Categories and Search Folders. What you will find if you embrace this system is that when you need to complete a task - you will find yourself sending yourself an to include it in your task list and manage it in this PIFEM manner. You Inbox will become the core task list for your job. And remember - if you find this useful you ARE OBLIGED to Pay It Forward and tell 3 others about it. I'd love to hear your feedback - let me know what you think. If you don't think it was worthwhile, you can just remove the Search Folders and work in your Inbox normally again! Easy! Cheers Ian

46 Feedback Tuesday, 11 December :07 PM I would love to hear what you thought about this course, and it's contents. Send me an to ianpal@microsoft.com with any thoughts, suggestions, comments, success stories, or failures. Cheers Ian