Effective Time Management · Using Microsoft Outlook to Organize Your Work and Personal Life by Seiwert, Lothar -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Effective Time Management: Using Microsoft® Outlook® to Organize Your Work and Personal Life Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction

Who This Book Is For

Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized Additional Video Lessons Online How to Get Support & Provide Feedback

Errata & Book Support We Want to Hear from You Stay in Touch

1. How Not to Drown in the Email Flood

Let’s Get Started and Change This! It’s Not the Email Messages, It’s How We Handle Them

Don’t Let Yourself Get Distracted

“Educate” Pushy Senders Disable New Email Notification

How to disable the visual and/or acoustic new email notification How to disable the automatic downloading of new messages

Process Email Messages in Blocks

Break Your Response Pattern

View Current Sender Information with a Mouse-Click: The Outlook 2010 Social Connector

Keep Your Inbox in Order

Process Your Email Block with the DANF System File Email Messages Accordingly

Convert Email Messages into Tasks and Appointments

How to create an appointment or a task from an email message How to quickly create a new contact entry for the sender of an email message How to create tasks and appointments from individual parts of a longer email message How to insert multiple email messages into existing tasks and appointments How to use a flag to mark an email message as a task in Outlook 2010/Outlook 2007

Create and Use Your Own Folder Structure

How to set up new folders How to move messages into the correct folder How to customize message sorting for individual folders

Flag the Messages You Still Need to Work On

How to assign a colored flag to a message in Outlook 2003 Don’t Force Alarms on Yourself: The Reminder Functions of Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010

How to add short notes and reminders to a message in Outlook 2003

Keep All Items That Are Flagged for Processing in a Single View

How to create your own search folders

Let Outlook Presort Your Inbox for You

How to set up rules directly from a message How to set up and change rules with the Rules Wizard

Think Before You Communicate

Make Your Text Easier to Understand: Always Adjust It to the Recipients Keep Your Phrasing Short, Precise, and Crystal Clear Use Well-Written Subject Lines to Make Everyone’s Life Easier

You Try It

2. How to Work More Effectively with Tasks and Priorities

Let’s Get Started and Change This! How to Run a Country Like the United States in the 24 Hours a Day Has to Offer—Set Priorities!

Focus on What Matters Most (the Pareto Principle) Decide What’s Most Important—Use the Eisenhower Matrix to Set Rough Priorities

Say “No!” More Often—and Therefore “Yes!” to What’s Important to You

Write Down Your Plans

Use Task Lists to Plan Flexibly and Effectively

Tasks vs. Appointments Tasks in Outlook

How to insert links to files instead of copies

The Text Editor in Outlook 2010/Outlook 2007

The Insert Tab The Format Text Tab

Format Text with Fewer Mouse Clicks: Take Advantage of the Mini Toolbar Take Advantage of the Multilingual Spelling Checker and the Foreign Language Dictionary in Outlook 2010 Take Advantage of the Multilingual Spelling Checker and the Foreign Language Dictionary in Outlook 2007

Define Your Own Views (Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, and Outlook 2010)

How to set up a new view Use Filters to Clean Up Your Views

How to set up a simple filter for your view How to hide all completed tasks

Fine-Tune Your Priorities with the 25,000 $ Method

How to define a 25,000 $ view How to use your 25,000 $ view for refining your priorities

The To-Do List—View Tasks from Multiple Folders and Email Messages at the Same Time

You Try It

3. How to Gain More Time for What’s Essential with an Effective Week Planner

What Really Matters—and Why Does It Continue to Remain Undone? Let’s Get Started and Change This! Take Advantage of Categories to Combine Tasks

Gain Perspective with Categories

How to Assign Categories to Tasks How to Assign Categories in the Calendar How to Assign Categories to Email Messages The Master Category List in Outlook 2010/Outlook 2007

How to use shortcut keys to quickly assign your most important categories How to fill the list with your own categories How to revise the master category list

Keep Track of Your Most Important Categories by Using Colors

How Outlook 2010/Outlook 2007 Displays Category Colors How Outlook 2010/Outlook 2007 Colors Appointments According to Category How to Avoid Problems with the Category Colors The Category System in Outlook 2003: How to Assign Categories

How to assign categories using the Outlook 2003 master category list How to clean up the Outlook 2003 master category list How to fill the Outlook 2003 master category list with your own categories

Set Up Your Own Category System

Filter and Group by Category

Filter Your Views

How to define positive filters for categories How to create negative filters

Work with Grouped Views

How to group your tasks by category

How to Show or Hide the Group By Box How to Expand or Collapse Your Groups

The Kiesel Principle—Gain More Time for What Matters Most Each Week

Keep Your Life in Balance Plan Your Professional Life and Private Life Together

The Four Areas of Life for a Life in Balance Seven Days, Seven Hats...

Regularly Take Time for What Really Counts

How to Plan Your Week with Outlook

Prepare Your Task List for the Week

Start Your Weekly Planning by Evaluating the Previous Week Plan the Incomplete Tasks from the Previous Week Again

Plan your tasks for the next week

Plan Tasks and Appointments Together in Balance

How to Show or Hide the Daily Task List How to Customize Your Daily Task List

Plan Appointments with Yourself to Concentrate on the Essential Tasks

How to create the appropriate task view for week planning in your calendar How to convert entries from the To-Do bar/TaskPad into appointments How to automatically color your appointments

You Try It

4. How to Make Your Daily Planning Work in Real Life

Let’s Get Started and Change This! The Basics of Successful Day Planning

Combine Similar Tasks into Task Blocks

Use Categories When Creating Blocks A Special Task Block: The ActionList

For Advanced Users: Take Advantage of the Journal for Semi-Automatic Time Protocols Take Your Performance Curve and Your Disruption Curve into Consideration Focus on Your Important Tasks Without Interruptions During Productivity Hours

Defend Your Productivity Hours

Order Must Prevail

Hide the Tasks Intended for Block Building in the Week/Day Views

How to hide all tasks belonging to block building categories

Mark Tasks That Are Due Today and Tomorrow in Color

How to color tasks by using automatic color formatting How to turn off the red color marking for overdue tasks to avoid such color conflicts

Gain a Better Overview by Using Appointment Lists

How to create new calendar views as thematically grouped appointment lists How to help yourself quickly, if you have accidentally entered duplicate holidays and now want to get rid of them

Fine-Tune Your Daily Planning

Plan Pending Tasks with the 25,000 $ Method

How to fine-tune the 25,000 $ view (created in Chapter 2) for your daily planning How to plan your day (with the new view) according to the 25,000 $ method

More Steps for Successful Daily Planning

How to estimate the duration of pending activities How to adjust the 25,000 $ view in Outlook Make Further Appointments with Yourself Keep an Eye on Buffer Times Use the To-Do Bar to Keep Upcoming Appointments and Tasks in View How to Customize the To-Do Bar

You Try It

5. How to Schedule Meetings So They Are Convenient, Effective, and Fun

The Problem: Way Too Many Inconvenient Meeting Requests and Insufficient Preparation Let’s Get Started and Change This!

Technical Requirements for Using This Chapter

Meeting Requests with Outlook—Basic Rules and Tips

Find Free Times and Evaluate Replies

How to create a meeting request Create Meeting Requests from a More Flexible View

How to create meeting requests from a more flexible view

Stay on Top of It: Calendar Overlay

How to answer meeting requests How to check and change the status of a meeting you called Use Meeting Requests Sparingly

Meetings Are Expensive

Optimize Your Calendar to Make Meeting Requests Easy

Keep Your Calendar Well Organized Take Advantage of the Show As Field to Flag Your Appointments

How to use all-day appointments

Flag Personal Appointments As Private

Prepare Meetings Effectively

Improve Efficiency by Preparing and Running Your Meeting Wisely Use Meeting Workspaces to Prepare Meetings

The Advantages of Meeting Workspaces Automatically Get Notified About the Changes Relevant to You Take Advantage of Document Libraries Discover the Advantages of the Other SharePoint Web Parts

You Try It

6. How to Use OneNote for Writing Goals, Jotting Down Ideas, and Keeping Notes

Why Do Important Documents and Notes Always Get Lost? Let’s Get Started and Change This! Finally, a Place and a System for All Your Notes

Use a Structured System When Planning

Have Your Notes Available When You Need Them

Do You Still Use Paper Even Though You Have a Laptop? Discover the Advantages of OneNote

Basics for Notes in OneNote

Take Advantage of the Digital Notebook Structure

Your Notebook Structure What Are the Subpages For? Notebook vs. Section Develop a Structure for Your Notebook Notebooks on the Web and Shared with Others

Work with Sections, Notebooks, and Pages

How to create new sections How to create new pages and subpages How to navigate among sections and notebooks How to open specific pages and subpages How to move or copy a page

How to Fill Your Pages

Text Functions How to Insert, Move, and Scale Pictures

How to insert screenshots into OneNote

Use Pens, Text Markers, and Colors

How to color entered text How to use text markers and pens How to set a picture as a background How to add documents as pictures

Meeting Minutes in OneNote

Use Outlining for Preparation

How to create an outline How to Collapse and Expand Levels, and How to Select Text on a Specific Level

How to create a table in OneNote

Keep Follow-Up Activities and Important Information in View

How to set and remove tags How to customize the available tags How to Quickly Find Elements Marked by Tags

How to take advantage of the full-text search

Link Your Information: Use Outlook and OneNote as a Team

How to transfer tasks to Outlook How to Create a Contact/Appointment Note from Outlook How to Export Email Messages How to Create Hyperlinks to OneNote Pages/Paragraphs

How to share your notes and meeting minutes with others

How to See When You (or Another User) Last Edited the Current Element

Create Page Templates and Checklists

How to create a template How to create a new page based on a template

Always Keep Your Ideas and Goals in Sight

How to link documents to your notes “Printing”—Export Data from Any Program

How to “Print” from Any Application to OneNote Save Websites from the Web Browser in OneNote

Read Between the Lines—OCR for Pictures Set Goals for Yourself—Not Just for Your Revenue

Set Goals with the 3M Rule: Measurable, Manageable, Motivating

Create Your Master Plan

You Try It

7. How to Truly Benefit from This Book

Let’s Get Started and Change Things! How to Get a Handle on Your Time

The Next Steps Test the Current Version of Office for Free

Take Responsibility—Do It Now!

Time Management Is Self-Discipline Create Your Own Personal Action Plan Find a Buddy Start Immediately and Keep at It!

A. Recommended Reading B. About the Authors Index About the Authors Copyright

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