Feb 17, 2012
Outlook can get weird in many ways and start performing badly. PST folders can get too big. Some add-ons will conflict with others.
Well, here is some software that analyzes your copy of Outlook 2007/10 and supposedly tells you what may be wrong. I have not tried it yet, but perhaps this will help one of you?
http://betanews.com/2012/02/17/you-probably-need-outlook-configuration-analyzer-tool/
Michael
Feb 17, 2012
I’ve gotten quite a few e-mails and comments recently that have made me realize I’d made a mistake about dismissing Quick Steps for MYN in Outlook 2010 too quickly. In an earlier post I had said that I didn’t think there were that many uses for Quick Steps in MYN because most, as applied to MYN scenarios, require more clicks than the equivalent manual actions.
However, in recent notes to me, people have pointed out that the real value of Quick Steps & MYN is when you use them from within an open e-mail. And now that I’ve tried that out, I have to agree, they are extremely useful when applied from within open e-mails. They do save steps in MYN. For example, for things like creating a task both as an attachment or not, and even filing to the processed mail folder, you do save steps when using the Quick Step button at the top of the open e-mail.
In fact, as many have pointed out, using that Quick Step is a useful way to get around the drag-create tasks problem I blogged about the other day.
So again, thanks to all who have turned my head about Quick Steps!
Here is an older link where I show how to use Quick Steps:
http://www.michaellinenberger.com/Outlook2010Introduction.htm#QuickSteps
It includes a link to a YouTube video we made on how to create Quick Steps.
Michael
Feb 15, 2011
For those of you who have been using my MYN system for a while (MYN is the advanced form of the One Minute To-Do List—1MTD; see this page for more info on the two), I want to point out something important. I want to emphasize the difference between Defer-to-Do and Defer-to-Review. It is a rather subtle point, and you’ll likely consider it only after you’ve been using the MYN system a while. But it’s something that I encounter every day when I manage my MYN to-do list, and I suspect you do to, without realizing it. So it’s worth a blog post to explain it.
Here’s the scenario. You are trying to clean up the Opportunity Now section of your MYN to do list (the medium or normal priority section). You want to remove items that you really don’t need to focus on today or even this week, and trim that list so it is nice and compact (fewer than 20 items). Other than deleting tasks, there are two ways to do that. Continue reading
Feb 9, 2011
I thought I’d blogged about this before, but I guess not. In Outlook 2010, Microsoft introduced a bizarre “feature change” that occurs when you drag-create a task from e-mail. It causes the new task window to disappear. But it is sort of fixable.
Some background. By now you know I recommend that you convert action e-mails that you cannot act on now into Outlook tasks, and then manage them in the MYN tasks system. And the way you do that is to drag the e-mail onto the tasks icon in the lower left of the Outlook screen.
Well, in Outlook 2010, when you do that, the new task often (usually) seems to disappear after you create it, which prevents you from editing the subject, start date, priority, and so on. Well, the task is actually there, it’s just hidden behind the main Outlook window. So if you move the main OL window aside, you’ll see it there. But many do not realize that and sit there scratching their head thinking the drag and drop failed to create the task.
The solution?
Jan 25, 2012
I’ve had a number of people ask me if there were time tracking tools that work with Outlook, for tracking billable time.
Here is one product that just came to my attention. Called Chrometa and it is a plug-in for Outlook. They say it will track how long you are in specific emails (reading, writing). I have no idea if it is any good, but the need seems to be out there so I hope this info helps someone. If you try it, let me know how it goes.
Michael
Jan 24, 2011
Here is a good article on some of the technical underpinnings of Outlook 2011 Mac.
http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/outlook/outlook-2011-mac-os-141278
Michael
Jan 21, 2012
Supervisors, don’t turn your employees into e-mail zombies. What do I mean by that?
Here’s a common scenario: a supervisor sends an e-mail to his or her employee and in the email tells the recipient that the action is due within an hour. When that hour is up and the e-mail has not been responded to, the supervisor calls or walks by the desk and says hey I sent you an e-mail why haven’t you done this? Within the next days, weeks, or months, the supervisor does this consistently.
The result? The staff are now all e-mail zombies. What do I mean by that? The staff are now constantly watching their e-mail for requests from their boss. They are fearful that if they don’t catch the e-mails immediately they may get in trouble for not responding quickly.
But here’s the problem. Because they are constantly watching e-mail, they are now attending to small low priority e-mails too, since they are right in front of them, and so are distracted quite often from their core work. They are now keeping their inbox open all times. Every e-mail that comes in they glance at to be sure it’s not from the boss. They keep blue-box e-mail notification on and constantly watch that box every time it pops up to see if it’s something from the boss, but of course they now read every one, and their main work is getting interrupted every few minutes.
They are now e-mail zombies. Research shows that it can take several minutes to get back into a task someone has been interrupted from, so productivity has decreased greatly in your team as they now all live in their e-mail.
So don’t do this! Don’t kill the productivity of your staff!
My rule of thumb: allow and expect that replies to e-mail may take up to 24 hours. That way your staff don’t feel like they need to live in e-mail. And encourage staff to check their in-box only every 2 or 3 hours, after they have finished bigger blocks of work.
And for urgent notification, instead of e-mail use the phone (yes the phone!). Or make it policy that you will all use text messages or Instant Messaging (IM) for (and only for) things that are urgent. You can always follow with details in an e-mail and alert them to that in the IM.
Then try to promulgate this policy throughout your company. You’ll be glad you did.
Michael
Jan 14, 2012
I am hearing some good things from my users about gSyncit, an Outlook add-on that syncs Outlook data with a number of cloud services. I haven’t tested it myself yet, but it looks like it may be a reasonable way to sync ToodleDo tasks into Outlook. It also syncs calendar and contacts data with Google, and notes with Dropbox. But I am most interested in its ability to do a ToodleDo tasks sync, and it looks good for that.
It’s not exactly what I am looking for since I am an Exchange user and gSyncit does not sync directly between the Exchange Server to ToodleDo server; you need Outlook running on your computer to make the sync. Why is that an issue? Well, say you are traveling without your computer and just using mobile devices… if your computer at home is not running, the sync may not happen. But that’s a “corner case” as they say, and this should still work for most cases with Exchange users.
That said, I think the main customer for this product would be Outlook users who do not use Exchange. In other words, you are using Outlook to access your email from a POP mail server or equivalent (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo mail, AOL, Hotmail, and so on). For users like that, Outlook tasks are only stored on their computer, and they have no way to put their tasks in the cloud. So, gSyncit provides that way—you can now use ToodleDo as your tasks server and then use any of ToodleDo’s mobile apps to access your tasks on the road.
One other possible use of gSyncit is this. If you are a ToodleDo user and normally travel with your laptop, you can use gSyncit to allow you to use Outlook as your offline client for ToodleDo. Think about this. If you normally use the web version of ToodleDo to access your tasks, what if you are on a plane and cannot access the web? How do you access your tasks then? You’d need to use one of ToodleDo’s third-party Windows applications (like Task Angel) and have kept that in sync before you got on the plane. Well, now you can use Outlook’s Tasks module for that solution, even if you do not normally use Outlook tasks otherwise.
So gSyncit looks like it can fill a much needed niche. If I actually start using gSyncit I’ll write up my experience. But in the meantime, if you are using it, share your experiences here.
Michael
Jan 4, 2012
[Feb 17, 2012 Update: I’ve changed my mind on some of these conclusions and now think there are lots of potential for Quick Steps in MYN, particularly when used from within an open e-mail. See my Feb 17 2012 blog on this]
Funny, I’ve gotten a number of e-mails in the last month or so saying (effectively) “I’ve discovered this new feature in Outlook 2010 called Quick Steps, and I am surprised you don’t know about it!”
Well, actually we wrote about Quick Steps some time ago, and we feature it in our Outlook 2010 article that is listed in the “Important Articles” section of our blog:
http://www.michaellinenberger.com/Outlook2010Introduction.htm#QuickSteps
We even made a You Tube video about Quick Steps (linked in that article) and mentioned that a few times in our newsletters too.
So, yes, we do know about Outlook 2010 Quick Steps, thanks!
But the thing is, over time I have changed my mind about how useful they are for most of the MYN processes. After trying them a bit I just haven’t seen that much (if any) time savings in using Quick Steps for MYN. If you create a Quick Step to file mail to the Processed Mail folder, the Quick Step requires 2 clicks (select mail item, then click button up in Quick Step section), while dragging only requires one click (click and drag in one motion).
If you are converting an email to a task it’s the same number of clicks (though I admit, for creating the task as an attachment you save one click). My opinion is that, in general, Quick Steps are fun to use but offer no significant time savings for most MYN processes.
That said, key savings can be had when you are combining two or three steps into one. The demonstration of Quick Steps in the article above is a good example of that. And if you find other multi-step operations, go for it. It’s just that we do not have many applicable multi-step processes in our standard MYN teachings. Which is why we did not cover Quick Steps in our 3rd edition of the Outlook book.
That said, if you have a killer Quick Step for MYN that actually saves a lot of time, let me know—I am willing to stand corrected!
Michael
Dec 31, 2011
One of my major teachings for e-mail management is to stop using 10, 20, 30, (100?) topic-named folders to file your mail. I’ve always claimed doing so is too slow to file and too slow to find things. I provide quicker and better alternatives in my Outlook books (with smart ways of using Instant Search being one of the main ones).
Well, IBM Research now backs me up. Here is a formal research study that shows just how slow folder filing is compared to using a search tool at search time. Check it out.
http://people.ucsc.edu/~swhittak/papers/chi2011_refinding_email_camera_ready.pdf
Michael
