When you go about your day on auto pilot, rarely do you need to change the direction you take to reach your destination. But on occasions when you are forced to take detours—like I have been recently while going to work—you might just find that there are all sorts of ways to reach your destination that you never knew existed.

The other day, I was taking a new detour that the signs said to follow, just to find myself at a closed road with new detour signs pointing me back the way I came. Anyone else ever have a problem with this?

So, geek that I am, I whipped out my handy GPS, typed in the destination, and found my way by turning off-course while the “lady in the box” (as my son calls it)  repeats “You are off route! You please turn at the next street and change directions.” Of course, the only way this is going to work is to constantly click the re-route button or veer off the beaten path enough that the “lady in the box” finds a new way to go so that you can hear the glorious phrase, “You have reached your destination.”

Well, you may experience this same kind of frustration when you arrive at a new PC or laptop computer and find a new version of Windows. You now have to navigate to familiar places in a very unfamiliar Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate or even Starter Edition on a netbook.

Don’t despair! We can narrow down your detours by helping to explain a couple simple routing options that you can use in any of these versions of Windows.

Let’s start with the simplest method first. The search bar. If you happen to know what you’re looking for by name, like Joe’s Pizza, The Museum of Natural History, My proposal for the boss, my new resume, etc…you get the idea! Then all you need to do is press the start button.

Wait! Wait! Stop right there! You might be saying, “What’s that? No start button?”

Oh, that’s right! It’s the large circular button with the Windows logo located in the lower left corner of your screen where the start button used to be. Once you push this magical button (I like that fact that it glows when you hover over it. To me, that’s magic!) you will see a rectangular box that says search. Simply type in part of the name that you are looking for and presto! It will likely show on the list. Now if that isn’t magic then I’m not David Blaine!

If you’re not sure what to look for by name, but keep saying to yourself “I can’t remember…But I will know it when I see it,” then you may wish to explore the Windows Explorer way of searching. Let’s say we were searching for a recipe on Gingerbread Houses or something similar because you might be feeling a need to revisit the fairy tales of your youth. You start by checking in your documents. No good. Then you try your videos. No good either. You start picking through your local C: drive, following the path but never finding it easy to just back up a little and try the alternate path. In the past you might have done this by using your back button or by using the up one level button, over, over, and over again until you couldn’t remember where you started. Why not whip out your magic wand and teleport to a specific place along the path? In Windows 7, your wand is a mouse pointer and your teleporting map is the address bar located at the top of the window you are in. Take two seconds and look at how it has changed. Instead of slashes you now see little arrows. If you click on the word or drive in the address bar it will take you to that folder right away. If you are not sure what lies ahead, click on the arrow to see a quick list of all the folders down that path—like peeking ahead in a choose your own adventure game so that you can control the ending.

Whether you are looking for help from the “lady in the box” or need to follow the bread crumbs, you will be able to jump for joy (or maybe scare your co-workers and family) and repeatedly voice “I have reached my destination!”

Until next time, don’t forget to stop by the blog and check out other useful tips at www.productiveUpodcast.com.

See ya next time!

The first item on our list is the angry e-mail. E-mail provides a crucial benefit over face-to-face communication: you have a chance to carefully choose your words and compose an eloquent message. But e-mail can also inspire a confidence that may be lacking in live communication.

This can lead to the angry e-mail, and sometimes it’s all too easy to write things you would never say. There’s probably a reason you would never say those things, so it’s important to keep that in mind before pushing that Send button. Once you do, there’s no way to get that message back.

So if you’re angry, upset, or irritated in any way, it may be best to step away from the computer for a break. That way, you will likely cool off or relax and have a better frame of mind; after all, you probably don’t want to burn any important bridges.

Next, let’s talk about the plague of electronic communication: the forwarded chain letter. We’ve all gotten these and may have even been tempted to pass them on at some point. I mean, let’s face it: if we pass that message on to at least ten friends, we could suddenly inherit millions of dollars. And if we don’t, it could mean bad luck for the next seven years. But that is more than likely not going to be the case.

Chain letters were annoying enough when they arrived as paper mail, but in that form they cost money to send. With electronic mail, which is mostly free, chain letter forwards are even more prevalent, and just as bothersome.

Some of these messages make you feel guilty if you ignore them, or even threaten karmic disasters if you fail to pass them on to a specified amount of recipients. And then there those that imply technical catastrophes if you don’t click on something or delete a certain file. Please, friends: don’t fall for those.

So, you might ask: what is the best way to handle these unwanted messages?  First of all, delete the message, especially if it is the kind that threatens technical disaster or asks you to click on a link. Second: if they are coming from a relative or close friend, ask them gently to not include you on the list for those e-mails unless they directly know the source.  Remember, this may be the only entertainment dear Aunt Sally has.

Our dear friend, the Cybercouth Tiger, sent a note about a few other aspects of e-mail etiquette that he wanted to share with us. Here is what he had to say:

One of my avocations is playing stand-up bass in an amateur jazz ensemble. We have six musicians in the band, but using electronic calendaring is impractical for us.  As a result, our rehearsals and gigs are scheduled via e-mail messages. This would be quite acceptable but for a few irritating habits of the members in the percussion section. They don’t seem to grasp the concept that only the band member serving as our organizer needs to know if they can or cannot attend a particular date. Being drummers (and in bands, it is always the drummers), they use Reply to All when Reply was all that was needed. We all get enough superfluous e-mail from spammers and bots without getting it from percussionists, too.

On top of this, the stick-wielding troglodytes don’t understand that typing in all capital letters is rude. I often must restrain myself from replying to them (not using Reply to All, of course) that, “ALL CAPS IS FORTISSISSIMO.  PLEASE STOP YELLING!” While the decorum of a jazz band would never allow me to comport myself in such a manner with my band mates, I count it a privilege to be able to help you avoid the percussionists’ errors and harmonize with the groups with which you work.

Thanks for the advice, Cybercouth!

The tips for this week center around these ideas and a few others that will help you avoid behaving like a troglodyte, or any other unsavory character.

• Reply to All With Care – Using the Reply to All feature in Outlook and Notes
• Think Before You Send – Understanding Outlook’s message recall feature
• Don’t Shout – Avoiding the use of all caps
• Unread Letters – Manually marking messages as read or unread in Outlook
• Need a Receipt With That? – Using read receipts in Outlook and Notes
• Break the Chain – Dealing with chain letters in e-mail
• Read it Later – Manually marking messages as read or unread in Windows Mobile

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 to make Miss Manners, the Cybercouth Tiger, and Mom proud of your e-mail communication.

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

Personally, the rhythmic tapping of fingers on a computer keyboard is like music to my ears. If there was a room with a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand computers…well, I don’t know if they’d eventually churn out a best-selling novel, but I’ll bet it would sound like a symphony in there.

This is one of the reasons I love using keyboard shortcuts while I’m working at my computer. When I’ve got a good typing rhythm going on my keyboard, I don’t want to have to disrupt the flow by reaching for the mouse to perform some commands (even though mouse-clicking can also be quite a pleasant sound).

Many e-mail clients support keyboard shortcuts, so when I’m catching up on e-mail correspondence, I try to make the most of those time-saving keystrokes. Everything from cutting, copying, and pasting text, to flagging a message for follow-up, and even sending the message, can all be performed right from the keyboard. If you’re doing something as simple as scrolling from the beginning of an e-mail to the end, you can avoid using the mouse altogether.

Even when you’re not composing a message, you can take advantage of many of the keyboard shortcuts that are available for organizing your messages and navigating through your mailbox. There are shortcuts for moving through messages in your folders, jumping directly to certain folders, moving or copying items between folders, and creating items such as messages and appointments.

Learning the keyboard shortcuts and teaching yourself to use them can take some time. I started off learning one or two, and found that I felt like I was working more efficiently when I could keep both hands on the keyboard. So I took the time to learn a few more, and eventually abandoned my mouse completely when I was working in Outlook or Gmail.

The tips for this podcast will focus on teaching you the keyboard shortcuts that are available for working with your e-mail, whether you’re in Outlook, Lotus Notes, or working on the go with a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile device. The links for these tips can be found on the blog entry for this podcast, at www.productiveupodcast.com.

• A Hands-On Approach to E-mail: Keyboard shortcuts you can use while composing a message in Outlook
• No Mouse Required: Keyboard shortcuts you can use while composing a message in Lotus Notes
• Control and Shift Your Mail: Keyboard shortcuts you can use in Outlook’s main window
• Moving Multiples: Using the Ctrl and Shift keys to perform keyboard shortcuts on multiple messages at once
• Get the Most Out of Your Keyboard: Shortcut keys for the BlackBerry e-mail application
• Touch and Go: Keyboard shortcuts for Outlook on a Windows Mobile device

We’ll also throw in a few bonus links to sites that list keyboard shortcuts for some of the other popular e-mail clients:

• Outlook Web Access
• GroupWise
• Eudora (PC)
• Eudora (Mac)
• Gmail
• Yahoo Mail

Once you get into the habit of using keyboard shortcuts, you’ll find that they really can save a lot of time compared to using the mouse for certain actions. The best way to start using them is to learn one or two at first. After that, you may find yourself hooked and wanting to learn more. Then, when someone walks by your desk and mentions that you sound like a thousand monkeys, you can smile gratefully and accept it as a compliment, knowing that you are composing your own symphony of tapping keys.

That’s all for this week, but if you’re enjoying the podcast and the tips, be sure to write a review for us over at iTunes. Also, don’t forget that you can follow us on Twitter @productiveUcast.

See you next time!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

“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

In the world of geek, there are few things more humorous than a sketch by the famous British comedy team Monty Python. One of my favorites is the Spam sketch, in which a man and his wife go out to breakfast and nearly every item on the menu contains Spam. Most items contain Spam multiple times, such as “Spam, bacon, sausage, and Spam.”

This may sound familiar, even if you’ve never seen the sketch. I’m sure you’re no stranger to being bombarded with spam in a different sense: in your e-mail. If you own an e-mail address, spammers have probably discovered it by now and have started flooding your Inbox with junk messages about replica watches, adult websites, and a wide array of pharmaceutical drugs.

Some of the more malicious spam messages include “phishing” techniques, which try to trick you into giving away personal information such as passwords into banking sites. It’s actually kind of sad to think that someone has so much free time to devote to so insidious a task. Why not use that time more productively, such as by volunteering at a local homeless shelter, or by playing Mario Kart on Nintendo Wii?

Most e-mail clients, including Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notus, provide tools to help you weed out and eliminate these junk messages. You can usually set up a filter that will automatically scan your incoming messages for certain words or phrases that are common in spam e-mail; those messages will get sent to a Junk E-mail folder so they’re not crowding your Inbox. You can sometimes even create a blacklist to block certain senders from getting spam to your Inbox.

In addition to these built-in features, there are other ways you can fight spam. For instance, it helps to be able to recognize when a message is actually just a sneaky attempt to fraudulently obtain your personal information.

So for the tips this week, there are some that show you how to use Outlook and Notes to block unwanted messages, along with some tips that will help you identify spam and phishing messages.

This week’s tips include:

• Does Your Inbox Have a Little Junk in the Trunk? – Configuring Outlook’s Junk E-mail options
• Rules to Rid Yourself of Rubbish – Using QuickRules in Lotus Notes to block junk mail
• Blocking and Junk – Blocking mail from specified senders in Outlook
• Keep it Out – Blocking mail from specified senders in Notes
• Spam Wars – What to do with messages that include “unsubscribe” links
• Forwarding and the Spam War – How to deal with forwarded chain letters in e-mail

The links for these tips can all be found on our blog at www.productiveUpodcast.com. If there are any topics you’d like to see covered in an upcoming edition, let us know in an iTunes review, or reach out to us via Twitter @productiveUcast.

That’s all for this week’s podcast. Until next week, just remember: you can’t have “egg, bacon, Spam, and sausage” without the Spam, but you can have an Inbox without spam. See you soon!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

Welcome back to the podcast!

This week’s edition…

“My Keys are in the Freezer” OR “Lost and Found”

We have all had one at some point in our lives – you know the interesting little morning argument with your spouse about why he or she moved your keys. Darn her incessant tidiness! Why did I marry someone who is so clean and neat?

In my case, I usually continue the argument while frantically wandering around looking for my lost keys. After all, I have to get out the door and off to work. Meanwhile, she keeps insisting that she didn’t move them. I remind her that I am a creature of habit and that I would have never placed them anywhere except on the table by the door.

This nonsense continues for a time, and then I give in and ask for the spare key just so I can get on my way (still kicking myself and blaming her, mind you).

In one such recent spat, I found my keys later – in the freezer. Yes, in the freezer. Apparently, I was so exhausted the night before that when I came home I when straight to the freezer to put ice in a glass. I remember almost dropping the glass and thinking “That’s gonna make a mess!” I put down my keys on the shelf and poured my drink.

I have begun to think that, in my old age of 35, I might be facing early onset of dementia, or perhaps I’m just a little more distracted. Heck, I am known around the office for borrowing pens and never remembering to return them.

Responding to e-mails can be just as much of a challenge for me. Even after my spam filter traps the junk, there are still volumes to keep up with.

Hence, this week’s tips, which are all about dealing with e-mail mania and precisely how to find where you “stored” your important information.

Our tips include:

All is not lost — Maybe those deleted items can be recovered after all.

Find it fast — Locating a lost message in your e-mail folders. Using Outlook’s Find feature to narrow down the list of hiding spots.

Searching 101 — Having trouble remembering where you placed an e-mail message? Using Advanced Find feature in Outlook.

Finding it on the go — Fast searches you can perform on your BlackBerry.

The search is on — Defining search parameters on your BlackBerry.

That’s it for this week’s edition. Until next time, and remember to say you are sorry to your spouse when you blame her for freezing your keys

You can find links to all our tips at www.productiveUpodcast.com, and don’t forget that you can always stop by iTunes and write that glowing five-star review you been meaning to give us.

Thanks for stopping by!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

Exercise equipment and organizational systems have at least one thing in common: many more are purchased than are used for their intended purpose. All of us know why most treadmills become clothes racks; it has to do with sweat. Today the Taskmaster will offer insights into why organizational systems are abandoned in hopes of helping you find one that won’t be. There are five main reasons for organizational system abandonment.

1. Too Much Overhead. If a system requires too much effort relative to the effort that it saves, the return on investment is too small and it is abandoned. Multitudes of bells and whistles are great if your goal is to make a lot of noise. If your goal is to get organized, take an Ockham-ish approach by choosing the simplest system that can do the job.
2. Square Peg and a Round Hole. No system is right for everyone or everything. System fit is crucial. This is why those plastic multi-drawer organizers are available with big bins, small bins, or a combination of both. Think through the “size” of what you want to organize and choose an organizer with “bins” sized for what you need to organize. Do you need to keep your big goals always in front of you, or do you need a place to stash these devilish details?
3. Style Matters. The Taskmaster and many other denizens of the digital domain don’t own an electronic book reader or listen to many books on MP3 because we like the feel of a book. You can throw in the smell, too; musty can be nice (blends quite well with the aroma from a cup of Sumatran coffee). Shakespeare is just better from a substantial leather-bound volume. Companies still make paper organizers because some people still work best with paper. Only a fool buys a tool because it is cool. Look for a system that works the way you prefer to work.
4. The Grass Is Greener. Any organizational system takes time to become effective. The promised perfection of the next system may actually cause the failure of the current one. If you are prone to this, try setting an evaluation date for the current system and refuse to look at others until the trial period is over.
5. Sometimes It Isn’t the System. If you don’t really care about what you are organizing or find the use of organizational systems to be a horrifically onerous task, the rewards for implementing a system may never be sufficient to make a system worthwhile. You probably didn’t think you would ever hear this from the Taskmaster, but sometimes (please use a thesaurus to look up nine synonyms for “rarely”) the best organizational system is none at all. In those rare (times 9) instances, the Taskmaster suggests you take the money you didn’t spend on a system you will never use and invest part of it in a comfortable chair, a good book, and a fine hot beverage.

The Friendly Taskmaster ]]> http://www.productiveupodcast.com/2009/10/my-treadmill-clothes-rack-and-rolodex-bookend/feed/ 0 http://www.productiveupodcast.com/2009/09/inventing-the-wheel-was-a-one-time-deal-vol033/ http://www.productiveupodcast.com/2009/09/inventing-the-wheel-was-a-one-time-deal-vol033/#comments Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:49:45 +0000 admin http://www.productiveupodcast.com/?p=1366 Welcome back to the podcast!

This week’s edition: “Inventing the Wheel was a One-Time Deal”

If you hang around any business office long enough, you’re likely to hear workers uttering the same banal buzzwords or expressions:

• “Is it Friday yet?”
• “Take that off-line and we’ll circle back later.”
• “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.”

Some of these are examples of corporate jargon and some are just phrases that have become so overused that they no longer have any real impact on the listener.

I know someone who asks, “Is it Friday yet?” every day of the work week. Yes, even on Friday. The phrase has just become so deeply entrenched in his vernacular that it’s now as common a greeting as “Hello.”

You probably know people like this, too. Maybe they don’t use these particular phrases, but I’m sure you’ve heard them spout off common business slang without ever giving a thought as to how frequently these expressions are being used. Don’t they ever stop to listen to themselves? Can no one stop them??

Sadly, no. Tell your boss you’re sick of hearing him use the phrase, “thinking outside the box,” and you may find yourself living inside a box on the side of the road.

But let’s back up a moment to the expression, “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.” As tired as I am of hearing people use this phrase over so many years, its meaning still rings true: “Why create something new when you can reuse something already created?”

To me, this points to one simple solution: templates.

Templates, in their many forms, serve the purpose of allowing us to create a basic design for something once, then apply that design toward creating many more similar things. Templates promote efficiency in many different industries. Even the clothes you’re wearing started out as templates in the form of clothing patterns. From just one pattern, several thousand identical t-shirts were created. Now don’t you feel unique?

In much the same way, template files can be created in many software applications. Microsoft Word, for example, allows you to create a document template. You can start with a new, blank document and then set all the options to your liking: create styles, set a default font, include some text in a header or footer, even include AutoText entries. Save this file as a document template, and now you can reuse it to create countless other documents that require the same styles, font settings, and other options. You can then add or subtract anything you like from this new document without changing the original template.

Sounds useful, doesn’t it? Maybe you’ve found yourself in this situation before: every month, you need to create a document on company letterhead. This might include a logo in the header with some contact information, and maybe a very specific font size and page margins. Maybe what you do every month is find the document you created the previous month, delete all the text from it, re-save the file with a new name, then type in your new text. Well, those days are gone. Today you can find that document you created last month, delete the old text, and then save it as a template. When you open the template, it’s already blank and ready to go with all the proper settings. Using this method greatly reduces the chance that you’ll accidentally overwrite any changes to that previous document.

Word isn’t the only application that makes use of template files, either. The tips included in this week’s blog entry will show you how to create templates for Excel, PowerPoint, and even Outlook.

This week’s tips include:

• Set the Standard: Creating new document templates in Word
• Making Normal Your Own: Setting formatting defaults on Word’s global template
• You Set the Rules: Creating a default template for Excel workbooks
• Put Some Style Into It: Creating and applying design templates in PowerPoint
• Déjà Vu: Creating an e-mail template in Outlook
• Give Your E-mail a Makeover: Using Stationery in Lotus Notes

So think about the files you work with on a frequent basis and consider creating a template for these. You’ll save yourself some time and effort, and you’ll avoid having to reinvent the wheel or anything else.

Thanks for joining us this week! If you have any other examples of corporate jargon that gets under your skin, let us know in the comments! Also, feel free to keep up with us on Twitter by following @productiveUcast, or visit our podcast on iTunes and write a review.

See you next week!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

This week’s episode: “Tag ‘em and Flag ‘em – Following Up, Outlook Style!”

As a cyber pack rat, I have a lot of things that I probably should have deleted or thrown away a long time ago, but I just can’t seem to do it. My collection includes computer cables, old gadgets, files on floppy and zip disks, hundreds of unlabeled CDs, and most of all, e-mail.

Out of  all of these, the hardest one to part with has to be my e-mail. I have actually been known to keep spam and archive it. (Well, you never know when it might come in handy. Also, I hear it tastes like chicken.) Okay, that even sounded weird to me, even though it sounded perfectly normal in my head.

So you might say that this is unhealthy, a waste of time and space; and I used to agree, in theory…just not always in practice. Then I met our VP of Business Development, who deletes virtually nothing.

So I asked him, “Why don’t you ever delete these things?” He responded, “You never know when you might need to go back and dig up a e-mail where someone had agreed to something and then denied it later, or when someone had an idea for a great project that just wasn’t do-able at the time, but could be great down the road somewhere. But most importantly, you never want to miss a follow-up with a business contact.”

I thought that was some great insight…and I finally had a rational excuse for saving all my e-mail and looking for ways to stay on top of important messages coming in!

So here are a few suggestions for you, because I know I am not the only cyber pack rat out there:

• If the item looks like it may be important somewhere down the road, then add a flag to the message.
• If the item needs a quick reminder to follow-up or start working on it, add a flag with a reminder on the message. (Just note that in versions prior to Outlook 2007, you have to leave the message in your Inbox or else the reminder will not go off.)
• Try adding a category to the message (in Outlook 2003 and later, you can pick pretty colors).
• If the message is for an upcoming meeting but not yet on your calendar, drag the message to your calendar and change the date/time so you can block out the time in your schedule.
• Here’s the best part of all of these things: there’s no need to delete! Just live in denial by flagging, marking your message as being read, then only view your messages in the “Unread Mail” view. “Look Ma, my Mailbox is clean…so long as you don’t look under the bed.”

But remember to be nice to the server guys and archive your messages every once in a while to conserve space and speed up your Mailbox. Now that you can get 500GB hard drives for under $100, why permanently delete everything when you can become a great e-mail historian? And if you have a flagged item that no longer needs following up, you can always mark it as completed.

There are more great tips for using Outlook to improve your follow-up in this week’s recommended eTraining class, Top Ten Tips for Microsoft Outlook. There’s a link to the schedule in this week’s blog entry, which you can find at www.productiveUpodcast.com.

Well, that’s all for this week. If you find these tips useful, be sure to leave us a comment at www.productiveupodcast.com, visit us on Twitter @productiveUcast, or write a review of our podcast on iTunes.

See you next time!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum.

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