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43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

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

Re: Is that book any good then?

Linenberger's book has some good ideas in it but is aimed at the person who sat at their computer and used the default layout. He gives clear step-by-step instructions on how to set up Outlook 2003 or 2002 for his suggestions

If you are confident with custom views and categories I would not buy it but borrow it and scan it for hints.

From my point of view, the two key points were:

Categorize your email (either manually or using rules) and store it in one folder, view it by category
[INDENT]This has the benefit of letting a message have multiple categories in which you can search rather than trying search through mutiple folders for one message[/INDENT]

[INDENT]Another benefit is for teams. Because emails carry their categories when they are sent, if your team agrees on common categories to use then all mail sent will arrive pre-filed[/INDENT]

The second point was to assign due dates to Next Action tasks and use High priority for those that MUST be done on that day. Make a custom Task Pad view to show incomplete tasks sorted by Due Date then Priority.

Tasks without due dates are called Master Tasks (similar to Projects in GTD) and should be reviewed frequently.

Hope this helps
Douglas

 
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