Total Workday Control book Newsletter, November/December 2006
Hello. The topic of this month’s newsletter is a productivity increasing e-mail workflow, and a simple acronym to help you remember the steps. And in this month's advanced tips section I include a highly recommended change to the TWC TaskPad configurations.

By the way, with the holidays arriving, my next newsletter will come in January. In that newsletter I'll review some of the new task features of the upcoming Outlook 2007 release, and how they apply to this system.

Reminder: you are getting this newsletter because my records indicate you bought or received a copy of my book Total Workday Control using Microsoft Outlook or signed up for my newsletter on my website. I truly hope you have enjoyed that book. Because of individuals like you, it remains Amazon’s #1 best-selling Outlook book. If however you think you received this newsletter in error, click the unsubscribe link at the bottom and you will be removed from further mailings, no questions asked.

Michael Linenberger, November 18, 2006
 

Gain Inbox Order by Getting Smart about E-mail:
The S.M.A.R.T. e-mail Workflow

Sometimes using an acronym is a good way to help remember or review a multi-step topic. One such acronym describes in a nutshell the core steps of the Total Workday Control (TWC) system for gaining control of e-mail. I call it the SMART e-mail Workflow. For those of you still learning the TWC system, read on, this workflow may help you put it together. And even for experienced users, this is a good way to communicate to others what you do every day.

Here’s are the S.M.A.R.T. e-mail workflow steps; do them in order.

S=Search for Action Mail
As you read your e-mail, you should be obsessed with locating e-mails that contain embedded actions. Remember, it is not spam or needless cc mail that bogs your inbox. Rather it is e-mail that matters that prevents you from getting through all your mail, or from emptying your Inbox. Specifically, it is unreconciled action e-mail that drags you down. Identifying and correctly processing action e-mails is the solution.

Doing this will eventually become second nature, but when first learning the system you should ask yourself with every e-mail you read: “Is there an action needed here?” “Do I need to do anything as a result of this e-mail?” And make sure to determine this the very first time you read each e-mail.

M=Manage E-Mail in Outlook's Task Management System
Once you identify an action in an e-mail, convert the e-mail to an Outlook task (chapter 6 of the book) and manage it in the Outlook Task system. To do this you will need to learn how to use Outlook's Task Management System effectively. The easy part is learning how to enter and manipulate tasks mechanically in Outlook. The more powerful part is using the TWC task management best practices that make task management effective. The four most important ones (chapter 4) are:

• Store ALL tasks in Outlook; make it your one stop where you prioritize tasks

• Create a Long Term and Short Term Task List (Master and Daily)

• Identify Must Do Today tasks and work those first

• Write all daily tasks as Next Actions

When extracting actions from your Inbox, try to work all the way to the bottom, and then file your mail away. Doing this every day keeps your Inbox fresh and ensures all embedded actions are mobilized for next steps.

A=Assess Task Priority
Once you’ve converted e-mails to tasks and placed them in the task system, the next step is to prioritize tasks ruthlessly. Face it: there is no way you can do everything handed to you in work and life, either from others or from yourself. So you need to identify your high priority activities and work them first. That way when you run out of steam at 5 or 6 pm, it is the low priority items that fall off the bottom.

I recommend you use the TWC prioritization approach built into the custom TaskPad configuration taught in my book. The TWC approach matches human nature well and so is easy to do and keep up with. Unlike most prioritization systems, it keeps your daily task list fresh and usable.

You can prioritize throughout the day as you create your tasks; and even better is to spend a few minutes in the morning to re-prioritize at the start of your day. See chapters 3 and 5

R=Review and work your task list
So you’ve converted e-mails to tasks and you’ve prioritized your daily tasks list. Now is the time to review and work your tasks. Remember: work your must-do-today tasks first; these are the tasks that will force you to work late into the evening unless you get them done early. Once those are done, pick and choose from your medium list. Use the positional priorities within that list to guide you, but also use your intuition and knowledge of changing business situations. Reprioritize as needed.

T=Take action off your daily task list
Remember, work tasks off your task list, not off of your e-mail list. Avoid working your tasks as soon as they arrive in e-mail. I know this is tempting because we all tend to get caught up in the emotion and enthusiasm of incoming e-mail and want to act right after reading them. But these impulses can quickly lead to time-wasting rat-holes. In reality, most e-mail actions, once prioritized, won’t make it very near the top of your prioritized list. So rather, trust your task management system and use it. Wait until after prioritization and then work your tasks. You’ll find you get through your Inbox remarkably fast as a result. And you’ll find you have more time in your day because you are not wasting time on low priority activities.

So that’s it. I hope these SMART steps will help you visualize and remember the key steps within the TWC system. This is of course a very brief overview. Many of the details you need can be found in the book. Start using the system today and get your e-mail under control.
 

Advanced TWC System Tip:
A Better TaskPad Configuration

Here's a small change you can make to the TaskPad configuration in the book that makes a big improvement to the TaskPad usability. The change is to use Outlook's grouping feature to clearly group all daily tasks by priority. This makes your high priority tasks stand out more (see below). It also somewhat dummy proofs the sorting of the TaskPad. Reason: once configured as above, clicking accidentally on the TaskPad header no longer completely ruins the sorting; rather high priority tasks stay grouped together no matter what. And recovery from an accidental re-sort doesn't require a full reconfiguration or even the non-intuitive shift-click shortcut described in the book. Rather a single-click on the header cleans up the sorting. All-in-all this is a highly recommended change and can be done in all versions.

Here's what this looks like in the Outlook 2003 TaskPad.

To configure this in your system, first configure the TaskPad as in chapter 3 of the book (or install the TWC version of ClearContext), then add these steps:

• Right-click anywhere on the TaskPad header area (for example, right-click on the word "TaskPad")

• Choose "Customize Current View" at the very bottom of the menu

• Click the "Group By" button (the second button down)

• Configure the top of that window as shown below (shown here is Outlook 2003, but the 2002/2000 window is nearly identical)

• Click OK out of both dialogs

That's it. Again, I highly recommend you make this change to your current TWC TaskPad configurations as it will make the TaskPad more usable, and the configurations even more stable.

 

Workshops and Training on
Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook
Don't forget, if you have a team or department that you'd like to get more productive, consider having a full day workshop at your company site for the entire group. The complete TWC system is taught, and students leave ready to go. There is no better way to jump start your team's productivity. All workshops are taught by me, the author. See my workshops page, or call 925-735-3920.

That’s all for now. Good luck with all your endeavors, and please do this: commit today to getting your e-mail under control. Once you do, it will change your whole attitude about work.

Michael Linenberger

PS: Remember to forward this to a friend if you think they could benefit from it. You can use the Forward to a Friend link below for a form that gives your friend a discount on the book if they sign up for the free newsletter subscription. Or just use your e-mail Forward button to forward this newsletter only.