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My Tools @Work

The empty Windows section looked so sad, I thought I'd post something here. Any other Windows users hiding out there? [I can definitely understand the appeal of Macs (some wonderful software out there that's Mac-only, for one), but I've just always used Windows (or, *cough*, DOS) machines.]

Outlook for email, calendar, and a little task management

  • I've created @Action, @Reference, @Waiting, @Reading Material, @Someday/Maybe, @Open Issues (some things seem to fit neither Reference nor Waiting)
  • I flag emails to remind me of the specific action that must be taken; these can also pop up as reminders.
  • I've got it set up so that email from my boss gets flagged for immediate reading, has its own particular color text in the in-box and makes a sound upon arrival. (This would be total overkill when applied to every email!)

Bonsai desktop (for the bulk of my Next Actions, task, project management)

  • I posted about Bonsai in the PDA folder, but its desktop component is just as useful and for the same reasons: categories, filtering, easy to create hierarchical lists/outlines, etc.
  • It's not free, but might be worth the ~$35 price tag to someone looking for a powerful listmaking/outlining tool that seamlessly syncs from desktop to PDA. (I was lucky enough to receive a license to it as a Christmas gift.)

I'm just doing my best to record everything in one of these two tools -- contact information, tasks, projects, lists, etc.

TOPICS: Windows
Douglas's picture

In my corporate cubicle we...

In my corporate cubicle we must use Outlook and the other MS Office tools and EDS have the system screwed down so tight that even simple hacks from the MS web site don't work reliably! So I am like [="Blue"]terrym[/] and use Outlook and a notebook plus synchronisation to an iPaq PDA.

Our mailbox size is limited to 256Mb and my mailbox is frequently full! The two ways I stay on top of it are firstly, vigorous use of the delete button and clearing of the Deleted Items folder and secondly, auto-archiving into date stamped archives. I have just read Michael Linenberger's book "Total Workday Control using Microsoft Outlook' and he describes how to do this.

I am not sure what you mean by sub-tasks, the idea of GTD is to record the NEXT action a task with sub-tasks implies a project - NA relationship. When I get a job that has a number of defined steps I will create an task and list all those steps in the task. When each step is completed I note in the task what happened and change the categories and due date to refelct the next step. For more complex stuff I use Projects and NAs.

In Linenberger's book he recommends not using folders in Outlook but instead adding categories to every email and moving it to a Processed Mail folder. this folder he views by category so that an email can appear in multiple places rather than just one folder. Has anybody used this technique and does it work for you?

 
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