In many ways I am very Old School. I use a paper planner. I keep physical notebooks. I print PDFs and physically take notes on them.
But for work that involves others I have been pulled into dropbox (useful), google docs (useful for collaborative writing that involves more than one other human), and outlook** (because the university email). I've toyed with Asana (was fun for one summer but I still prefer paper). I've used scrivener (hasn't done anything for me that word docs don't). Occasionally I learn something that is game changing (I didn't not know you could add PDFs to google forms, which solves so many of my problems!).
So I have a very specific question, and also a general one. Specific: for anyone who uses outlook, what are features you find valuable? General: are there other apps/platforms/technologies that you find helpful for work flow in general? Happy New Year! More words about that soon.
** since the university switched to outlook, over a stupid web based program, I find I have MORE problems organizing email and staying on top of email. (My old system was very straight forward; anything marked unread I hadn't dealt with, and I kept my inbox down to the 25 messages I could see at a time). I suspect there are easy solutions for this, but that means spending time playing with outlook to explore sorting, rules, etc. I'd rather not take that time. But I think 90% of my displeasure with work, seriously, has to do with email.
But for work that involves others I have been pulled into dropbox (useful), google docs (useful for collaborative writing that involves more than one other human), and outlook** (because the university email). I've toyed with Asana (was fun for one summer but I still prefer paper). I've used scrivener (hasn't done anything for me that word docs don't). Occasionally I learn something that is game changing (I didn't not know you could add PDFs to google forms, which solves so many of my problems!).
So I have a very specific question, and also a general one. Specific: for anyone who uses outlook, what are features you find valuable? General: are there other apps/platforms/technologies that you find helpful for work flow in general? Happy New Year! More words about that soon.
** since the university switched to outlook, over a stupid web based program, I find I have MORE problems organizing email and staying on top of email. (My old system was very straight forward; anything marked unread I hadn't dealt with, and I kept my inbox down to the 25 messages I could see at a time). I suspect there are easy solutions for this, but that means spending time playing with outlook to explore sorting, rules, etc. I'd rather not take that time. But I think 90% of my displeasure with work, seriously, has to do with email.
I am not a very organized person, but I learned something about Outlook in the last year or so that I must share with you, in case you don't know it. In my law firm, it's not uncommon for our managing partner to send out an email to all users, generally congratulating someone on a court victory of some sort. Absolutely fine for him to do this, and minimal time is wasted reading his emails of this type.
ReplyDeleteHOWEVER, there are always some people who feel the need to "Reply All" to these emails, cluttering up my inbox for the rest of the day. Since time is money in my profession, this is particularly annoying.
I learned that you can right click on a message in the string and select "Ignore Conversation" so that all subsequent replies go straight to your deleted items folder. Great for situations like this where you know that further input from you on a group email string will not be required. . . and on the off chance that you learn that you *do* need to read someone's reply, you can search for it in your deleted items and find it quickly.
(Apologies if you already know this. . . . )
I use Outlook to book appointments: if a student emails me, I send them an appointment. This helps me to keep track of what's happening. P. S. I had to identify FOUR sets of pictures to post this. Whoever is using us to train their AI recognition is getting their money's worth.
ReplyDeleteCan't you do the same thing in Outlook? Keep unread things you haven't dealt with? I actually created a folder "to do" for things I need to deal with but not that week, that way they aren't staring at me every time I check my email. When I plan my next week, I'll pull out things I need to deal with and keep them in my inbox so that they ARE staring at me and I'll remember to do them.
ReplyDeleteOther things I either answer right away (if its quick) or batch to "email catch up" time (1-2 times/week) or delete.
Undine , I’m so sorry! Those things make me crazy.... I think you can comment anonymously and just sign name..
ReplyDeleteAna, yes, you can sort that way in outlook. But you can’t mark a read email as unread, which I used to do. I need to start color coding I think.
Didn’t mean to complain—sorry, gwinne! I was kind of amused by it.
ReplyDelete