Martin Spriggs

Yesterday I wrote about one of my favorite tools for getting stuff out of my head and into a trusted system to which I could turn when I need to remember or find something from the recent or distant past – Evernote. Today comes the other half of the technological brain extender I use almost everyday — Diigo. The best way to describe Diigo an online social bookmarking tool that lets you “annotate” the web.

“Oh for the simpler times and the simpler ways.” Have you ever said that? I know that if I haven’t said it, I’ve thought it. I know in the past I’ve heard my parents and grandparents say it. It really is a complex thought. What is it about the past that makes us think things were simpler? Speaking only for myself I know that before email, instant messaging, voice mail, video conferencing and the like, the only communication tools I had were writing letters and an occasional phone call — if it wasn’t long distance because “that was expensive.” What that also mean for those who lived in “simpler” times was that you had fewer “inputs.” Fewer things coming into your life at a moments notice that would cause you to have to make a decision. Today we have hundreds of inputs coming in to our lives everyday. Phone, email, voice mail, etc. In the old days you’d have maybe a letter or two a day, maybe a phone call and perhaps somebody stopping by the front door.

I am not saying that it was simpler before because we were less busy. There has always been plenty to do. What I am saying is that we spend more of our time than ever before processing many more inputs than we ever had to before…and unfortunately most of us aren’t well equipped to handle the increased load. Chances are you inbox is full, you have unreturned voice mails — or you are waiting on others to return your call or email — and you have long since given up trying to deal with all those inputs. Now a lot of that “stuff” as Solomon would call it, is meaningless. But, whether you know it or not, it still is a cause of stress. Our brains want to do everything, at the same time, and when we can’t it’s hard for us to be comfortable with that.

For me however I’ve found some assistance through technological tools that help me deal with those inputs. Those that follow my blog know that I try to use the productivity methodology called GTD or “Getting Things Done.” One of the tenants of that approach is to get everything off your brain and into a trusted system. I use Microsoft Outlook for a lot of that. But another tool that I find I spend a lot of time in is Evernote. I like it because it allows me to “extend my brain.” This brain extender allows me to save every thought, piece of content, etc. that I believe I might need to retrieve at some point in the future. It could be a blog post, meeting notes, restaurant review, voice memo to myself, task list item, an email from somebody, an idea, an official document, and the list goes on.

Evernote has been around for some time, but recently there was an excellent article in Inc. magazine describing its journey to the top of the productivity system heap. It’s worth a read: http://www.inc.com/magazine/201112/evernote-2011-company-of-the-year.html. There are three things I like best about Evernote:

1. It is simple to use. Just open a new note and start typing. Or email something to it. Or cut and paste something. Or click the record button (either on the desktop app or mobile phone app) and say something. It can store pictures, documents, etc. usually with just the click of a button. It is just plain simple to use.
2. It indexing everything making it very easy to find anything you’ve stored. Upload a PDF and it will scan it and allow you to search for any word in the doc. Even more impressive is it’s ability to scan text in a picture. So take a picture of a receipt, upload it and you’ll be able to search for text in the image. It really works.
3. It’s all in the cloud AND on your computer/phone. Evernote can be configured to work locally (i.e. without Internet) and in the cloud and everything stays in sync. So no matter what your setup — mobile phone, iPad, Mac, PC, or other — chances are you will have access to all your stuff whether you have Internet or not at the time.

Evernote has a free version that is fully functional (except for the ability to scan PDFs for indexing). Although if you begin to use it store all your stuff, as I do, you will want to go for the Premium version which runs an affordable $45/year. Here is the info on what Premium gives you: http://www.evernote.com/about/premium/.

Today, if I need to find something or remember something I turn to Evernote and it will likely be there. That helps extend my brain and can assure it “hey, I’ve got that covered.”

I’ve been using many of the productivity principles of Getting Things Done (GTD) for about five years now. For even longer than that I’ve grown to rely on Outlook – Microsoft’s popular email, calendaring and task application. Without either one my productivity would take a serious dip. So I thought I’d share the rather simple steps I take to allow Outlook to work well as a GTD engine…specifically how I can quickly process my emails into Next Actions, Defer tasks to a specific day and/or time, putting emails in a tickler file I’ll remember to look at, and finally delegate tasks with the appropriate follow up notifications. If you are not familiar with the GTD productivity system and associated lingo, head over to www.davidco.com for some free resources and downloads that will introduce you. With that knowledge in hand this blog post will make more sense to you.

Let’s start with creating a semi-automated way in Outlook 2010 to turn an email into a Next Action/Task. We’ll be using the Quick Steps feature of Outlook to do this. Quick Steps are on the ribbon under the Home tab.

Before creating your first custom Quick Step, you will want to create three new folders under your Inbox folder and name them @Action, @Deferred, and @Tickler. Then add 12 new subfolders under the @Tickler folder and label them for each month of the year. Once these have been added, you are ready to add the @Action Quick Step. Click on “Create New” in the Quick Steps section and name it @Action.

Now just complete the form using the settings above. To use it, just select the email you’d like to turn into a task/next action and hit the @Action Quick Step you just created. The email will be attached to a task, which you can name with the appropriate action verb and other directions, then be sure to hit the Category button to assign the right context. (Your contexts may vary. The basics could include Errand, Home, Office, Computer, Agenda, Email, etc.) Then Save and Close the task and viola, your email is attached to a task, and saved in the @Action folder, just in case something goes wrong. Not out of the question with Outlook. You really don’t need the saved email in the @Action folder, since the entire email is attached to the task, with any attachments…sweet. So you may want to clean out the @Actions folder occasionally to save disk space.

Now if you sort your Tasks by Category you will quickly be able to see all your next actions by context. This is what my Task list looks like. Now I have a task with the attached email waiting for me to open it up and complete with all the reference material I need to complete the job.

Deferring an email (turned next action/task) is easily done as well using Quick Steps. What this one will do is take that email and plant it on your calendar either as an all day event (as a reference for activities you’ll be involved in that day, or as an appointment with a person or a task you will complete at that time).

Click on the “Create New” again and name this one @Defer. Fill out the rest of the form with the settings below.

Now, when you are ready to move an email out of your Inbox onto the calendar for reference or as an action, just click the @Defer Quick Step and it will allow you to set the day/time or all day event that will place it at the top of your calendar for reference once you get to that day. You can then either use the email as a resource, or as an action you need to perform on that day when you can fit it in. Again the email will be stored in @Deferred for safe keeping…probably never needing it however.

But what about those emails you want to consider at some point in the future, just not right now? Those, of course, belong in some kind of “tickler” system. This is where those @Tickler folders you created come in. First of all, let’s create the Quick Step. Here again are the settings for it.

Once completed, then select the email you want to tuck away until a later date. Hit the Quick Step called @Tickler and it will ask you what folder you’d like to move the email to. Navigate to one of the months you created under the @Tickler folder and click OK and off it goes.  (Note: My system only accounts for months to store stuff. If you want greater granularity you could use the @Defer tool to put the Tickler email on a specific day. I find that to be overkill however.)

One important part of the tickler process is to remember to look into the appropriate folder at the right time. So what I do to help me remember is to create a recurring task that reminds me to check my @Tickler file folders once a month.

Finally my favorite part…delegating. This is the only one of the four that doesn’t use a Quick Step, but a Rule. It really isn’t that hard either however. So you have an email that you’d like to forward to somebody else to address, but you also need to stay on top of this and perhaps take some kind of action after they have done their thing. So the trick is to send the email, but save a copy and put a task on a “waiting for” list. Here’s how. First, go into Categories and create a new one call !Waiting For (I use the ! sign in front to move this category to the top when sorting). Then go to the Rules button in the ribbon and create a new rule. Go into Advanced options and work through the steps to wind up with something that looks like this:

Essentially what you are doing is telling Outlook to look for emails forwarded from you with your email address contained in the CC line. When Outlook sees that it will move the mail into the Tasks folder with a category tag of Waiting For. You will never see the email even come into your inbox. So to Delegate an email, just CC yourself as you forward it and you will have a record of your delegation and be able to follow up as necessary.

There are many other tweaks that make Outlook a little more GTD friendly, but with this set of four you should be able to become more productive and keep your inbox empty and your task list and calendar accurate and useful.

This post is a part of the
Summer 2011 WELS Hacker
series on the WELSTech Podcast.

One of the most misunderstood but useful features in Windows 7 is the library. In many ways a “library” is much like a folder. In it you can store documents, music, pictures, etc. There is one important difference however. Libraries gather files that are stored in several different locations.  This may not seem like a big difference, but it can be very powerful. Let me provide an example.

Let’s say you store your pictures on your local hard drive in the pictures folder AND you also store older pictures on an external hard drive. Once you have set up a Library called “pictures” for example, you can configure it to monitor your pictures folder and the folder containing your pictures on the external hard drive. These can even be network drives. It in essence brings these locations together to appear as one bigger folder. This allows for easy file management, searching, and sharing. Here is a list of all the locations that can be included in a library.

Copied from Windows 7 help website.

Windows 7 has already created a few for you. To take a look open Windows Explorer and click on the “documents” library. You will see at the top it says “Includes: 2 locations.” If you click on the word “locations” you will see that it includes My Documents and Public Documents. You can click the Add… button to include other folders, perhaps some stored on a network drive or external hard drive. Very handy.

Libraries work like regular folders with one major exception. They aren’t “real”! You have to remember they are only pointers or windows to other locations on your computer, external hard drives or networks. So you can’t really save things to a library, but you can save things to one of the folders in the library. When you work with libraries you have the ability to identify the “default save location.” Simply open up the Documents Library Locations window, then right click any of the folders you have included there and you will have the ability to select the “set as default save location” option. Now when you save to that library it will be placed in that default save folder.

One last thing…you can safely delete libraries without any data loss to the collection of folders beneath it. Since it only monitors and shows the contents of the selected folders, you are only deleting the library designation, not the underlying folders.

Give Windows 7 Libraries and try and let me know what creative ways you use them.

This post is a part of the
Summer 2011 WELS Hacker
series on the WELSTech Podcast.

Those that follow this blog know that I’m an advocate of the productivity system called Getting Things Done (GTD). You can find out more at http://www.davidco.com/what_is_gtd.php. Those that follow it know that one of the critical success factors for staying on the GTD wagon is the Weekly Review. During the Weekly Review you step back and take a look at your organization/planning system from the project level (i.e. 10,000 feet). You insure that each project has a next action and that you have captured all the projects that need to get done.

Where many people fail however is not doing the Weekly Review regularly. I recently heard a great analogy which reinforced for me its importance. We’ve all hear the phrase “ship shape”. It’s what sailors do when they aren’t battling wind and wave. They are essentially preparing things on their ship so when the unexpected or expected chaos of a storm (or anything else for that matter) comes, they are prepared. They have readied the ship to withstand whatever mother nature throws at it.

That is what a Weekly Review is. An important step in readying yourself for life and everything it might throw at you. Without it your ship is not ready for the inevitable chaos coming your way and you will constantly feel out of control and unprepared. For a good podcast by David Allen on the topic and where I first heard the illustration listen to http://www.davidco.com/podcasts/play/41.html.

Martin