Workflow Processing using Microsoft Outlook

Transcription

1 Implementing DAVID ALLEN S Workflow Processing using Microsoft Outlook Solutions for the way you work and live

2 Contents Introduction Parts of Outlook don't work the way Microsoft thought they might... 2 Outlook has the ingredients for a personal management tool... 3 The principles that optimize the management of work... 3 The need for simple lists... 4 "Portabilizing" your lists... 4 Get friendly with your keyboard... 5 Setting up OUTLOOK Tasks as an Action-List Manager New definitions of "Category" and "Task"... 9 Reconfigure your Task interface... 9 The final structure...11 Customize your Master Categories list...12 The best categories to start with...13 Customizing your categories Use the Task speed keys Using the Find feature in Tasks Expanding only the categories in play...20 Set up the Calendar view with the same Category View of your Tasks...20 Using the Calendar Time-specific actions Day-specific actions Day-specific information...23 The speed keys for inserting calendar items...25 Putting the Calendar and Tasks together functionally...25 Organizing The fundamental success factor: operate from zero base How to get to empty...26 About the delegating functionality built into Outlook Speeding up addressing Utilizing the Notes Functionality for useful lists How it works as a list manager Setup Some great categories and lists...34 Cutting and pasting...34 Tips about Contacts Get control of your new inputs Creative use of the Find feature Miscellaneous The RIM pager If you are initially setting up synchronization to the Palm Conclusion

3 1 Workflow Processing Introduction page 2 Many people in our client organizations and seminars have expressed interest in optimizing Microsoft Outlook as their personal organizing system, utilizing the David Allen & Co. workflow management best practices. This is a manual for setting up Outlook and using it effectively in that context. This information will provide the greatest value if you have some familiarity with our workflow mastery model. Many of the suggestions herein will be intuitive and common sense to anyone, but maximum power in using Outlook lies in the understanding and implementation of our total approach. The complete delineation of these high-performance methods of personal productivity can be found in David Allen's book, Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity. 1 The recommendations herein come from thousands of hours of one-on-one coaching with professionals at all levels, a majority of whom work in an Outlook computing environment. This manual provides a tested basic set of formats and behaviors that have proven to work as a starting point for many people. We suggest you try it out and then tweak the system to fit your own needs and preferences. Much room remains for experimentation and customization, and no two clients of ours wind up with exactly the same configurations and procedures in place. The setup instructions work with Outlook 2000, and if you have an older version there may be some slight differences in the location of dialog boxes, etc. Parts of Outlook don't work the way Microsoft thought they might Two potentially powerful functions in Outlook-Tasks and Notes-are universally underutilized. Tasks and Notes can be employed to great benefit, but only by understanding a very different way to think about "Tasks" and "Notes" than is evident by simply booting up the software or reading about it. Less than 1% of all the Outlook users that we have coached have been using the Tasks or Notes functions in any systematic and effective way before they work with us. The Tasks area was designed as an informal project manager, keeping track of tasks grouped by the project they're about. It also embodies a lot of complex features related to percentage complete, status, and delegating and tracking tasks to others. However, the way people actually work doesn't usually fit this model sufficiently to make it worth the effort to keep it appropriately populated with real items in real time. In other words, it only works if your "inner geek" shows up with ample time to play around with all the connections and features. The Notes function seems to have been designed as a simple little "idea collector" with its own area, much like having a whiteboard on which to park your sticky notes. But there was, in contrast to the over-building of Tasks, almost no functionality built into the Notes usage. 1 Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity; Viking, New York; 2001, hardback. Available from booksellers or at

4 2 Setting up Outlook Tasks as an Action List Manager page 9 Using the TASKS function as an action-list manager works extremely well, if you configure the View appropriately and use Task entries and Categories differently than was originally intended. (Caution: we recommend you don't try to do both-that is, use them for action reminder lists and the informal project management tool it was initially designed for. A hybrid configuration would be very difficult to manage.) New definitions of "Category" and "Task" Using our method, you must redefine "Category" as list title and "Task" as list item. In other words, the Categories will represent the various lists (such as "Projects", "Calls", "At Home", etc.), and the "New Task" dialog will be the place to enter anything that goes on any of those lists. By attaching it to a Category (i.e. a list title) you will in effect put something on that list. (This will be much clearer when you actually try it out.) Reconfigure your Task interface In order to configure the Task section appropriately for this, take these steps: 1. Clean up the TASK section Get rid of any miscellaneous entries currently in TASKS. You can do this by either deleting or removing categories from the tasks in each of your existing categories. You will not want to build a new configuration with old "stuff" still resident in your Tasks. The first thing to do is look for any entries that you may have, and either (a.)print them out in hard copy and toss into your in-basket for later reprocessing into your new system (recommended), then select all categories, right click on the selected list, then select "Delete,"or (b.)leave the entries you have in there, but keep them uncategorized, i.e. with no Category assigned to them. You can do this by collapsing the list down to only categories, then select all the categories, right click on the selected list, select "Categories," and uncheck all the checked boxes. Later, these entries will show up in a single section called "Categories: (none)" which can function as an in-basket and should remind you to rethink what's still in there and distribute the results appropriately. 2. Change to View by Categories Go to the Task section of Outlook. Click View, Current View, By Category. 3. Change the Fields in the view Click Customize Current View (View, Current View, Customize Current View). That will bring up the View Summary dialog with various buttons on the left. Click on the Fields button to bring up the Show Fields dialog. Use the Add and Remove buttons and the "drag-and-drop" mouse feature to set up the "Show these fields " list box as follows:

5 5 Uitlizing the Notes Functionality for Useful Lists page 33 This refers to the Outlook Notes section, similar to the Task section-not the Notes attached to the bottom of Tasks and Appointments. At first glance the Notes function in Outlook is merely a simple bulletin board for miscellaneous mental Postits, and as such gets very little use from most people (a real Post-it is a lot more practical). However, using it to create and manage effectively a limitless number of potentially useful (and fun) lists makes it extremely valuable for personal organizing. The best practice here is to use Notes as an arena for collecting, populating, and organizing an array of reference lists and checklists that can be accessed as needed. How it works as a list manager Notes can be categorized and viewed by category (in Outlook 98 and later), similar to Tasks. Then your categories in Notes will serve as your list headings, and the Notes will be the list items. The first line you type in the Note will show up as the listing under the category; all the details you can enter on the note below the first line (up to 32k). For instance, you could have a Category called "Travel", and each Note could represent a different city you frequent, with restaurants, things to do, people to see there, etc. Setup In the Notes function, set it up with View - Current View - By Category. Remove all the fields but Subject (easiest is to click and drag the field title upwards until you see a black X, then release). Once you create a note (<Cntrl-Shift>-n), when you want to categorize it, click on the small icon in the upper left of the Note and click Categories. This will bring up the Master Categories list. If the category is not there yet, click Master Category List and add it. Then click the appropriate category, and click the X in the upper right corner to save it. (Sorry, they didn't make all those quite as easy as putting away the Tasks with speed keys.)