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There’s a joke by the late comedian Mitch Hedberg in which he recounts a transaction that he feels did not require any documentation: he got a receipt when buying a donut. As Mitch had stated in his trademark deadpan:
“I’ll just give you the money and you give me the donut…end of transaction. We do not need to bring ink and paper into this.”
This scenario might seem a bit ludicrous, even for those who prefer to document everything almost religiously. But with the increase in activity on social networking sites, the minutiae of everyone’s daily lives seems much more prevalent now than it was several years ago.
Think about how often you’ve seen your friends informing the world what they had for lunch via Facebook, Twitter, or any other site with status update features. Is this something they would have shared with you over a phone call a few years ago? “Hi, Dave. I just had a tuna hoagie. Okay, talk to you later.” Probably not; but as technology advances, we find ourselves equipped with new ways to keep track of all kinds of information.
It’s comforting to know, then, that this capability has some uses that are actually productive. E-mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes, for example, make it particularly easy to document your appointments, tasks, and other activities. So not only can you set up an appointment to meet with a contact, you can also have a record of the meeting for future reference.
Outlook takes this a step further and allows you to associate a contact with other items, such as e-mail messages, appointments, documents, or tasks. Once the items are linked to the contact, you can view all this related content on the contact’s Activities tab. You can then filter this view to show only upcoming appointments with that contact, for instance.
The tips for this week will focus on those features that help you keep your appointments and tasks organized and well-documented. The tips include:
- Your Presence is Requested: How to schedule a meeting in Outlook and Notes
- Stay Active: Using Outlook’s contact Activities feature
- A Noteworthy Feature: Making quick notes with Outlook’s Notes feature
- “Dear Diary…”: Using the Journal feature in Outlook and Notes
- Raising the Flag: How to flag items for follow up in Outlook and Notes
- A BlackBerry Never Forgets: How to flag an e-mail for follow up on your BlackBerry
Enjoying these tips? Have any suggestions for future podcasts? Stop over and write a review of the podcast on iTunes, or drop us a quick note on Twitter @productiveUcast.
That’s all for this week. Until next time, remember: you might never need a receipt to prove that you bought that donut. But then again, you just might. See you next time!
Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum
