Taming MS Outlook Emails and Tasks

Bit of a long blog, but the next 15min spent learning these simple MS Outlook tricks WILL save you tons of stress forever and help you get things done on time!

Monday morning: you come into work, looking forward to another manic Monday. Start up MS Outlook. A few minutes later - "Congratulations! You have 195 mails in your Inbox!" The situation is only slightly better on a Tuesday and much worse after holidays.

Our usual options:

1. Ignore the problem and plunge into work
2. Respond to all the mails in the inbox. But, this takes up too much time. And wait, you received 50 more mails during that time. When will this madness stop?!?
3. Delete the Inbox and loudly blame it on the IT and start fresh. (Ok drastic as this seems, there are theories to suggest that a Lost Inbox will not actually kill anyone, but I wouldn't recommend testing it on yourself)
   

Let's call this the bulk email problem.

You somehow handled it - we'll shortly see how. Then you have the BEEPs. Emails just don't stop coming in. Each email grabs our attention with a beep or that pesky little pop-up. We do a complete context-shift from whatever we're doing. You hear a beep, you reach for the mouse. And if you don't hear a beep, you're quietly anticipating it anyway.
Let's call this the continuous email problem.

Finally there's tasks.
MS TASKS is the solution to much of our email problems. But it can also be a problem in itself because we collect many many tasks every day (from home, at work, through emails, meetings, etc.). We will see how to effectively use TASKS to get things and emails done.
Let's call this the task overload problem.

SOLUTION to ALL 3 PROBLEMS LIES WITHIN OUTLOOK!

1. Solving the BULK Email problem

Goal: Empty your inbox as quickly as possible

I clear my Inbox when I come in to work and before I leave. You could also do it in the middle of the day if you want. If there are over 50 emails, I drag "Subject" field up. Then I quickly "Process" each email as follows. The subject grouping gives me a common context, so I don't need to context-switch all the time.

Processing an email is actually quite simple. Just do one of the four D's.

1. DELETE / ARCHIVE / SPAM: If the mail does not require my action and it's more of an FYI, I just file it away in an appropriate folder (you can also dump all mails into Processed. That's fine too in these days of Xobni). If it's useless, I just delete it. If it's spam, add to "block sender".
   
2. DELEGATE: I decide if this is something others should be doing; I fwd it to them and do the usual delegation
3. DO: If the mail is fairly urgent and takes less than 30sec to respond to, I respond to it and file it away
4. DEFER: If the mail takes any longer: I drag and turn it into a task as described in TASK OVERLOAD section (e.g., "prepare a PPT for the boss", "respond to Jay's question") and again file it away in a folder.

2. Solving the TASK OVERLOAD Problem
Goal: Get the right things done and stop worrying that you're missing some important tasks

Here's how I create a task (from Emails or otherwise):

1. If the task HAS to be done today, I give it High Priority. Else it's Normal priority.
2. I assign the Start Date: the date when I should start working on it. It may be today or some day in the future.

A little bit of one-time housekeeping:

1. Open your Calendar window. Enable the Taskpad in it (View -> Taskpad)
2. Right click on top bar of Taskpad -> Customize current view
3. Group the tasks by Priority (descending)
4. Display the Complete, Priority, Subject, Start Date fields
5. Filter -> Advanced -> only show items that have start-date on or before today; and status is not equal to Completed
   

Here's the routine I follow to get things done.

1. Open the Calendar window (Separately from the Mail window)
2. Scan the High and Normal priority tasks in the taskpad and see if any need to be moved up or down. If you don't want to bother about it for few more days, simply give it a future start date, and it'll disappear frm the taskpad. Nice, isnt it?
3. Then: attack the High Pri tasks through the day
4. When they're done, see if I need to move any more Normal tasks into High Pri. Start working on some Normal tasks if I like to and there's time
   

3. Solving the CONTINUOUS Email Problem
Goal: Don't let emails interrupt your day, unless they need to

This is the simplest. During the day, I DON'T open outlook Mail unless I get an urgent mail alarm. Then, I process the urgent mail (using the 4 D's) and move on. If many came by the time I came from a meeting, simple, I just process the Urgent Mails Search Folder. That's all.

Ok, for this to work, you do need to a few pieces of housekeeping.

1. Disable the annoying "pop-up" and "beep" in Outlook (Tools -> Options -> Email options -> Advanced email options)
2. Create some Outlook rules for alerting us when "urgent" mails come. (Tools -> Rules) as below
   
3. Create a rule to act on the mails that come in marked with High Priority. Action: Pop up the notification or ring the alarm, assign the mail a Green Flag
4. Create another rule to capture other kinds of urgent mails: E.g., based on Senders (e.g., Boss, Customers, Spouse, etc.) and may be some key Subjects that you care about. Some people like to put the mails where they are in the "To: " list in it, but even that's too much for me. Action: same as for the above rule
5. Create a Search Folder called "Urgent Mails" with the search criterion to only show "Green Flag" emails. (Right click on Search Folders -> New -> Create custom -> Criteria -> More options -> Mails marked Green flag)
6. In the Favorite Folders section, drag in: Inbox, Unread mail, and Urgent mail.
   

The basic theory here seems to be about relieving stress:

• we don't want too much stuff staring at us. That's the idea of emptying the Inbox and blocking popups
  
• we want to move the nagging worries about various unattended emails and tasks from our mind into a catch-all basket --> And that's the idea of capturing ALL tasks and mails in your Taskpad
• we don't want to be staring at too many things, and that's the idea of filtering by Start date today or in the past; and turning off non-urgent alerts
• we don't want to miss the important things -> and that's high priority items and urgent emails
  

Hope this works for you! Please let me know if you have any questions or alternative ideas!

References: Getting things done, Total Workday Control, Drucker's priceless books, and Blogs.


Thanks! Vishy