Productive U Podcast

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Welcome back to the podcast!

This week’s episode: “Organizing Your Mail and Contacts”.

You know, nothing’s more honest than a 7 year old kid. He tells me things he likes, he tells me things that he doesn’t like, but one of his favorite likes happens to be organizing and arranging things, or just searching through one of those “Where’s Waldo?” books. You know, it can actually be fun looking for one thing in the midst of others. Heck, there’s even a game on the Nintendo Wii where you can sort and organize your Miis.

While find to spot things in a “Where’s Waldo?” book or on the screen with your Wii, it may not be nearly as fun on your computer monitor. Many software applications have features that let you see only what you want. Sorting and filtering are often things you can do in different views. Why would you want to change your view? Well, the goal is to find what you need quickly and conveniently.

Let’s take, for example, the staple of every office secretary… the Rolodex. How might you organize your Rolodex? Let’s use the example of my Rolodex of “Things that Rock!” Remember, the purpose of the Rolodex was to organize and quickly locate information depending upon what you were thinking about at the time.

For example, in my “Thing that Rock!” Rolodex, I might have the song “We Will Rock You” filed under W for “We Will Rock You” or under Q for Queen, the artist. I might have Rocky Balboa under B for Balboa, R for Rocky, or under Philadelphia, or even museum. How about the Rocky Horror Picture Show? Perhaps I have it under Movies, Musicals, Brad, or Janet.  Maybe Lynyrd Skynyrd, they rocked! You know, maybe I have them stored under F for Freebird, L for Lynyrd, S for Skynyrd. How about Fred Flintstone? He’d be listed under B for Bedrock, that kind of rocks. He worked in a quarry, so Q for quarry or F for Fred, or F for Flintstone, or maybe W for Wilma because his wife was nice, too.

Now you can see how having these different cards in many places so I could find them easily and make them easily accessible might get a little out of hand. What if Fred Flintstone changed his address? Now I have to go find all the cards that I had on Fred Flintstone to update his address, and what a mess that would be. No matter which kind of system you’re using-whether it’s BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Outlook, Lotus Notes, you name it-all of them have these different kinds of views or categories, or some way to organize data so you don’t have to constantly duplicate it. As you saw with the Rolodex example, it can just get really out of hand, and you’ll never know for sure if you actually have the accurate and updated information.

I have to say that one of my favorite things in Microsoft Outlook, whether it is version 2003 or 2007, was that I was able to categorize items by color. For instance, I could color-categorize items from my Fraggle Rock friends. For Gobo, I made his color purple because his hair was purple. And Mokey had light blue hair, so I used a light blue color. For Red, (shock, shock) a red category color. Wembley had yellow hair so I assigned him a yellow category color. And Boober had orange hair, so he got an orange color for the category.

Now I can organize e-mails for all these people and actually color-categorize them, as well. This way, when I get e-mail from them or I assign tasks to them, it can be marked in their color so I know who’s actually doing what just by simply looking at the colors on my screen.

This week’s tips include:

Arranging Your Inbox (Outlook)

Have you ever wasted countless minutes scouring your Inbox and thinking, “It has an attachment, but I don’t remember when I got it or who sent it…?” Fortunately for you Outlook, provides a quick way to arrange your Inbox the way you need to see it.

Quick Sorts (Outlook)

Sorting and filtering e-mail can help you find groups of messages you need to see. Creating or customizing a view can help you find things you use regularly. But if you know who sent you a message but not when you received it, one click can help you see all your messages sorted according to who sent them.

A Watched Inbox Never Boils (Outlook)

Have you ever missed an e-mail message from your boss or HR that you really needed? Or are you constantly checking your Inbox to make sure you know the very second messages come in? Would having an e-mail message jump out of the mass of messages help? Automatic Formatting can help.

Needle in a Haystack – Finding Things in Outlook (Outlook)

With technology constantly finding new ways of delivering information right to our fingertips, some of us find ourselves swimming in more e-mail than we know what to do with. Depending on how often you archive or delete old messages, it may be difficult to find things in Outlook when you really need them. Customizing your Views can help you find messages.

Categorizing Outlook Items – Only Half the Battle (Outlook)

Categorizing your Outlook items is a great way to stay organized in your daily work environment, but it is only half the battle. Being able to easily find or view your Outlook items by category is the other half.

Using Rules to Manage and Organize Your Mailbox (Outlook)

Rules help you manage your e-mail messages by performing actions on messages that match a specific set of conditions. After you create a rule, Microsoft Outlook applies the rule when a message arrives in your Inbox or when you send a message.

How to Use Different Message Views (BlackBerry)

Messages View is the first view you see when looking at your BlackBerry e-mail messages, but you can also look at messages using several other views.

Using Different Calendar Views (BlackBerry)

When looking at your Calendar, you may want to see different things at different times. Your BlackBerry provides four different ways of viewing appointments on your Calendar, all of which can be accessed by going into the Calendar and displaying the menu.

Using Views in the Address Book, Memopad and Tasks (BlackBerry)

Within the Address Book, Memopad, and Tasks, you can create and apply filters to quickly see entries that are associated with that filter.

And finally…

Viewing Tasks on the Today Screen (Windows Mobile)

By default, you can view your tasks on the Today Screen. However, there are several options that you can enable to view the types of tasks you have available. Use the following steps to change these options.

Well, I hope this week’s tips will help you to organize your Rock minions. Don’t forget:  the links for these tips are actually here in this blog entry.

If you like what you see here, you might also like some of the links we are posting on Twitter. You can follow us on Twitter at @productiveUcast.

Until next time-Rock On, Dudes! We’ll see ya next week!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 5:15 pm and is filed under BlackBerry, Microsoft Outlook, Office 2007, Organization and Time Management, Podcast, Uncategorized, Windows Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.