Outlook is a very powerful time and communication management tool if you decide to take advantage of some of it’s less often used features.
While these tips and tricks can be used by anyone, for almost any reason. I am going to explain how I use them from the perspective of a business owner. Why the distinction? Because business owners are generally juggling many responsibilities at the same time: business development, operations, administration, short and long term projects, serving on non-profit and association boards, etc.
In the digital age, a lot of management is done from the inbox. For many business owners, the inbox serves as both a communication repository as well as a t0-do / follow up list. The problem with this approach is, that given how many things the business owner is involved in, the inbox can fill up pretty fast – to-dos get mixed in with communication follow ups, etc. Here’s what I handle it: (all of these tips are based on Outlook 2007)
Organize Using Subfolders & Categories
The most commonly used method of organizing email is to use subfolders. I have several just under my inbox. I have one subfolder that acts as my GMail inbox, so those emails stay separate from my Carceron email (I use my GMail account strictly for personal stuff). Another way that I use subfolders is to store important emails relating to any association management that I am involved in. For example, I might have one subfolder called “Corporate Connections”, one called “Kiwanis”, etc. – anything where I am on a board of directors or serve in a management capacity outside of my company, Carceron. It is important to note that I do not archive all of my business emails in my personal subfolders, but in Public Folders in Exchange – this way everyone in my company has access to them. To create a subfolder in Outlook, simply right click on the Inbox (or whatever folder you want to create the subfolder under) and select New Folder. Name the folder and you’re ready to go.
Many business owners and managers use their inbox as their follow up repository. An easy way to organize your inbox is by Categorizing email. To Categorize email, simply right click a message and click Categorize. You can create your own custom categories and colors by selecting “All Categories” at the bottom of the Category menu. Once you start categorizing, then you’ll want to sort your Inbox first by Categories and and then by date. This way, newer and un-Categorized emails is always at the top and email is always together bundled below. The end result should come out something like you see below. Note that the “Categories: (none) (1839 item, 2 unread)” is my unread and or unprocessed email. The email in the Category containers below are for follow up (e.g. CARCERON Accounting – which I will open when meeting with my book keeper or CPA)
Prioritizing & Email That Needs Your Attention
I get a ton of email from a variety of sources: my staff, clients, the associations I belong to, social media, vendors, etc. Obviously I want to prioritize my staff and clients. To do this, I “re-color” their message in my inbox so that I can quickly identify them amongst the hundreds of other messages in my inbox. To do this, simply click on any message from a person that you want color coded in the future, then, from the top menu bar, click Tools –> Organize; select the “Using Colors” options and then simple select your color. Here’s an example:
If you have a very full inbox, a more effective way to get to the emails you need to respond to faster is to use Search Folders. If you look just below your Tasks folder, you will see the Search Folders section. To create a new Search Folder, simply right click “Search Folders” and select “New Search Folder”. A window will pop-up that will allow you to configure the your new Search Folder (which is really more of an inbox filter). There are many ways to configure your Search Folders. The primary way that I use them is to filter by people. For example, I have one folder for my company, Carceron. When I click this folder, it will display all emails currently in my inbox from everyone on my company (assuming that I have specified them in the search folder criteria). I have similar folders setup for various Corporate Connections chapters, clients, VIPs, etc. It also comes in very handy for voice mail. I use YouMail for my mobile phone’s voice mail. This service emails me a transcriptions and MP3 file of all voice mails that I get. Using a Search Folder customized to view only emails from YouMail is a very fast and effective way of processing voice mails because I can just “read” the voice mail as an email message and respond to it or delete it without having to listen to every single voice mail.
Automate Email Sorting
Using the Rules, you can automatically sort emails a variety of ways. I use Rules to route all of my GMail correspondence to a separate subfolder, to route all e-newsletters to a separate folder (I can get to those later when I have time), routing electronic faxes to other folders, Google Alerts, etc. To setup custom Rules, click on Tools –> Rules and Alerts. You can do a great many other things with Rules, like create different sound notifications based on the sender, or automatically flag messages for followup base on sender. Have fun with it.
Some Other Strategies
Do It, Delegate It or Delete It
If you want to really take your mastery of Outlook to the next level, purchase the book, Take Back Your Life with Outlook which is chock full of tips and tricks to make Outlook really work for you as well as how to better manage your time. One of the core teachings of the book, as it relates to inbox management, is “Do it, Delegate it, or Delete it”. Basically this means means do whatever needs to be done at the time you are reading the message, or, delegate it (forward it to a staff member, convert it to a Task and assign, etc.), or, delete it (junk mail, unimportant FYIs, etc.). If you follow this to the letter, than you should have a very small inbox. This philosophy does not work for me as well it could, because I keep so many categorized follow up emails – but it is essential to keeping my Inbox much slimmer than it could be. Delete is especially useful when your checking messages via a mobile device like a Blackberry – as long as you remember to do it. I get tons of FYIs and CCs (e.g. FaceBook notifications, etc.) that I have no need to keep that clutter up the inbox. If I remember to delete these messages that become useless once read, then they will not be waiting on me when I open Outlook later on for some real email processing.
Schedule Email Checking
If you are trying to focus on a particular task, like writing a proposal or SOP, it can be very distracting to have emails continually flow into your inbox, making noise and popping up notifications in the lower right corner of your screen. The solution is very simple, yet surprisingly hard for so many people who have the need to always feel connected: Set Outlook to Work Offline or close Outlook down while you’re working. When I have an admin day where I need to get a lot done, I check Outlook 2-3 times a day: 1st thing in the morning, after lunch and, perhaps, late afternoon. In between those times it is set to Work Offline. Incidentally, this is also a great way to catch up on email without being interrupted. How many times have you been working on trimming down your inbox only to be stalled by new incoming emails as well as ongoing email back and forth from what you are working on in your inbox? When I process my inbox, I have a goal, usually in days, of email that I want to process using Do It, Delegate It or Delete It. So I set Outlook to Work Offline and I process, for example, all email from the previous 3 days. Anything that I send, will hang in the Outbox until I set Outlook back to online. To set Outlook to Work Offline, simply click the the area in the lower right corner of Outlook that says “Connected to Microsoft Exchange” and then select Work Offline.
I hope that this returns a little sanity to your life.
When we started this year, I wrote two blogs surrounding leadership and goal setting:
