Tips for taming e-mail in Outlook
If you’re not a subscriber to Fast Company magazine, I wanted to call your attention to a terrific article in this month’s issue “Six Tools to Help Tackle Overflowing Email” by Robert Scoble.
Five of the tips are exclusively for Outlook users. Since I don’t use Outlook, I haven’t been looking at tips for this system as I work my way through my 2009 new year’s resolution. However, I know that many of our readers are on Microsoft systems and could greatly benefit from Scoble’s advice:
If I were going to recommend only one tool, ClearContext (clearcontext.com; free for personal use, $90 per seat for project management) offers the most immediate productivity gains. The Outlook add-on looks at who you’re replying to and how often, then automatically prioritizes the messages. It color-codes the most pressing ones, graying out mass emails.
The article even provided some insight for us non-Outlooker users:
As much as I like these tools, the best way to improve your email experience is to follow the advice I gave those Cisco employees: Take some conversations elsewhere. If you need to write a press release or a report, and 10 other people need to modify or approve it, you’re much better off using an online word-processing tool such as Google Docs or Adobe’s Buzzword. One email invites everyone to join the collaborative workspace, then everyone can make changes or leave notes on the document itself. No revision tracking. No full inbox.
Thank you to reader Laura for first bringing this gem to our attention.
Posted by Erin on Feb 10, 2009 |
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11 comments posted
Posted by Gillian - 02/10/2009
Another handy online tool is zoho.com. There are lots of different tool modules within it, and it seems to continue to grow. Word processing, lists, and lots of things I don’t even recognize since I don’t use them.
Posted by Jared Goralnick - 02/10/2009
Just thought I’d echo the recommendation of Scoble’s for ClearContext–the abilities to prioritize messages, delay the messages you don’t need to deal with, and tie everything to categories are quite helpful!
Posted by Peter Juhl - 02/11/2009
Outlook is a great tool, but its too bad that so many people and companies use it “out-of-the-box”.
Outlook is highly configurable and with a few tweaks any user can increase their productivity with up to 50%.
Instead of using folders, look into categorizing emails and using search folders.
Use rules to have newsletters automaticaly archived and categorized.
If you are an advanced user, exploit filters and views.
Outlook is a very strong tool if you look behind the curtains.
Peter
Posted by Charlie Forness - 02/11/2009
E-mail clutter is always a great struggle for me, at work and at home. Most of that is attributable to the old, “I’ll look at it later” mindset and then I rarely do (this is me taking 100% responsibility…isn’t that one of the 12 Steps for E-mailers Anonymous?).
The problem I have with the Magazine article is the comments for the non-Outlook user…working for a large company like I do, that is about the size of Cisco, I can tell you without a doubt, the workers would face termination if they put any company-related documents out there in an online word-processing tool. You keep everything well protected within the network only. I am not trying to be overly critical, but either I work for an out of touch company or the article writer may be a little out of touch with corporate security, I donno.
Till then, back to wrestling with my inbox(s).
Posted by Tim - 02/12/2009
I have used Outlook and all kinds of tools over a period of years and have come to the conclusion that rules, views, tags and the like can turn you email all kinds of colours, but they cannot replace looking at the content.
Unless you are hard-assed enough to say that certain people/projects/activities are off your plate, and have informed them respectfully that that is so, you will end up handling the mail.
Except for abusive situations (CC-wars etc) I do not recommend doing that.
The true issue here is: what does this e-mail contact mean to me, what action does it require? Until you have determined the answer to those to questions you are guessing rather than deciding.
I recommend using the Getting Things Done (GTD)methodology. It is simple, addresses the real issue, needs no special technology and has, for me, been a lifesaver. Once you get used to the mental discipline it requires it makes e-mail much more rapid and also tends, for all the people I have coached so far, to reduce it’s volume.
Posted by CJW - 02/27/2009
Thanks so much! I need things like that, or I really can’t use outlook. One great one I got was from http://www.outlooktrackit.com. Basically is a toolbar plugin/addon that reminds you to follow up to emails if you flag them.
Posted by CJW - 02/27/2009
Thanks!
Posted by CJW - 02/27/2009
Outlook Track-It is another great tip for email control. It actually sets a reminder if you flag an email – to followup to the email. It’s great for anyone using outlook. Free download on the site, too. Google it!
Posted by angelicious - 02/10/2010
Annoying that you have to register to see the article. To quote Mutant Enemy: “GRR! ARGH!”
But I will check out ClearContext. Tx!
Posted by shari - 02/11/2010
More examples of out of touch recommendations. Like Charlie, I cannot simply add a plug in, or post work material anywhere outside the network and I find it hard to believe people at companies of any size could do so. It would certainly not seem wise from a legal stand point even if your company had not thought to forbid the practice.
Posted by Sam - 02/12/2010
@Tim: I couldn’t agree more.
I like to think of email processing as just extracting actionable items and placing them on my calendar or my lists. The “husks” then get thrown into my Reference folder or the Trash.
Once the right mental software is loaded (i.e. GTD or Zen Habits’ similar Email Zen approach), you just need three email folders to minimise processing time:
Inbox
Reference
Trash
Everything actionable goes onto the calendar or the appropriate list. If you need to keep the email to reply to or forward once you’ve done the action, just throw it into Reference and find it later using instant search. It’ll be no slower than searching visually through your “Pending” or “Action” or “Project 1234″ folders.
The other CRITICAL behaviour is to force yourself to deal with email the first time you open it; in other words, Only Handle It Once (OHIO). I struggled with this for a long time before I allowed myself to create “Reflect on ___’s email and respond”-type actions for the really tricky messages.
Like others here, I’ve tried dozens of email configurations, clients and approaches, and GTD’s simple discipline has proven the most robust and efficient for me.
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