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I live in Microsoft Outlook – it’s always open on my second monitor at my desktop PC.
All of my incoming information collects there; email (2 email accounts), twitter, RSS feeds, Jott emails and tasks. I track my contacts and calendar in Outlook as well. It’s very overwhelming, especially on a busy email day. I don’t think I’m alone!
There is a difference between a message, an action item and taking time to execute the action, and the developers of Microsoft Outlook agree. That’s why there are mail, task and appointment items built in. So I tried to use Outlook for task management - and failed miserably. After a few days I had so many tasks in Outlook I couldn't keep any of them in front on me. I spent most of my day moving them around - not very productive. Back to inbox management.
About three years ago, I had my AHA moment. I've been a quality professional for over 20 years, and one of the foundations of quality management is good project management. Finding improvement opportunities is hard and takes work, however, implementing them and making them stick is REALLY hard. This is the strength of good project management - scope your implementation, plan it, staff it, and manage diligently until your scoped outcome is achieved. It works for complex organizational efforts, why couldn't it work for the individual.
That moment was the genesis of our [Outlook add-in] [2]. Implement project management in Outlook, the tool that we all use everyday all day. Enable the Outlook objects, i.e. mail, contacts, appointments, tasks, journal items, meetings, and posts to be categorized to a project, then give people the tools to manage them like they would project objects.
Since projects can be aligned to goals [1] [3] and I can now align tasks to projects, I was on my way to managing my everyday work with greater focus, but I had to break some old habits and create some new ones.
New Habit: Create tasks for messages that require action and categorize them to a project.
New Habit: If it's important to keep, put it in the journal or save it to a folder categorized to your project. That way it will show up in the [Project Explorer] [4] and supporting search tools and you'll know why you saved it in the first place.
New Habit: Process your inbox and other collection points. Use the [5Ds] [5] to help you decide what needs to be done with each message. The key is 'make the decision', don't let it hang in the inbox.
New Habit: Block out time for planning, 30 minutes for weekly planning, 10 minutes a day for daily planning. Weekly is focused on reviewing current commitments, reflecting on what's important (goals) and realigning tasks and appointments to achieve what's important. Daily is focused on reviewing today's commitments and realigning tasks and appointments to meet commitments.
In an upcoming post I'll talk about David Allen's contexts (from his GTD method), which we've implemented as Focuses in the Organizer tool. They seem to work best in helping you on the day of execution to stay efficient with your focus.
I am now officially out of my inbox - it is now conquered. With a new mindset, a tweak to the management tool (Outlook + Organizer), and a few new habits, I am no longer overwhelmed by my email inbox.
I think the companies that are focused on developing tools for better email management are on the wrong track. I like the idea of conversations, however, I'd rather see people spend less time in their inbox and more time on execution, i.e. using project management to help guide them and focusing on execution excellence.
Do you agree?
Links:
[1] http://www.ceptara.com/node/201
[2] http://www.ceptara.com/products/organizer
[3] http://www.ceptara.com/node/50
[4] http://www.ceptara.com/products/demos
[5] http://www.ceptara.com/node/43
[6] http://www.ceptara.com/taxonomy/term/3