It’s been a little while since I have blogged, but I thought this week that I’d get back into it.  Perhaps half of my future blog posts will lament my lack of blogging. 

Principle III – Make Writing ToDos as Easy as Possible

This principle is less about the need to do a Task List, and more about helping someone adopt the system.  If it’s time consuming to record what needs to be doing, you’ll spend more time recording and not actually doing.  I think the solution is very simple, and very deliberate.  My tool of choice, Microsoft Outlook 2007.  Outlook’s task list, of course has due dates, and a way to view those tasks based on the priorities that you assign.

This is key [for me at least].  Memorize the “New Item” keyboard shortcuts in Outlook. 

Check out, New Task – CTRL-SHIFT-K.  I think this keyboard combination helped me the most adopt a system where tracking tasks was incredibly easy.  Something comes to me in an inbox, and I’m basically three keys away from prioritize a task to do later.  I think this took some time to practice, because at first, I did want to use the toolbar and the menu to go create a task, but it just didn’t stick.  I can set the task and stop having that hang over me.

Adopting the keyboard shortcut:

• For me, I use the left CTRL and SHIFT key – they are right next to each other, leaving the other hand for that K.
• Getting in the habit keeping the inbox down to zero where possible.  If you have some emails that you know you need to deal with, just not now, just copy those emails into the new task. 
• CTRL-SHIFT-A – is to make a new appointment.  I think both of these are more memorable when you actually use both of these.

Principle IV – Make Checking ToDos as Easy as Possible

Now that we’re recording our tasks successfully – I don’t believe that it’ll be useful unless you consult that list [and reprioritize as necessary].  My tools here are two things: Outlook Today and a little Outlook customization to create a keyboard shortcut.  I try to make checking

Outlook Today – is a screen that displays your calendar, your tasks, and message counts in key folders in one page.  It’s become my central place to track what I’m supposed to be doing, or where I’m supposed to be.

Making Outlook Today Work For You

• I set the setting to have Outlook start in Outlook Today when it’s started.
• I set Outlook Today to sort my tasks by Due Date, and then by importance.
• Choose a view for Outlook Today that’s concise and easy to look at.  My favorite is the Standard – Two Column.  [I don’t think having a third column to dedicate to the email folder message counts was important to me, remember I’m making the inbox less important as a place to check by forcing myself to use Tasks].  I think “Winter” and “Summer” are also good alternatives.

Here’s my settings screen for Outlook Today:

Getting to Outlook Today Easy

As far as I can tell, there’s no out of the box keyboard shortcut to get to Outlook Today in Outlook, so users are left to clicking on the small space in the folder tree for their PST or Mailbox.  I found this to be particularly annoying – especially if I was going to check this place often for my Tasks.  Here’s a little bit of Windows functionality that’s constant in just about all applications: any letter in the menu, toolbar, or window that is underlying, you can press ALT and that letter to shortcut that action.  Try pressing ALT-F in most of your applications, you’ll probably find the File menu pop open.  So then, I thought to myself, if I could find a menu item, or toolbar item for Outlook Today, and it was visible, I could get there any time, very easily.  Queue – the customization box:

1.  Show the Advanced toolbar, by right clicking anywhere in some empty space, and selecting Advanced from the context menu.

2.  Choose to enter Customize… mode within the Outlook Toolbar zone.

3.  When in customize mode, you can drag and drop any visible toolbar button to any other location within the menuing/toolbar system in Outlook.   You’ll see the icon for Outlook Today, you can now drag that up to the main toolbar, or even the menu bar.  I put this in the menu bar out of preference.

4.  Right click on that new icon, while still in customize mode, and choose Image and Text, which changes the icon from just being an icon, to actually showing the label for that button.

5.  Now, notice it actually says “Outlook Today”  In particular look closely at the ‘k’ – it’s underlined.  Now that this is in the menu bar, and is always visible, you can press ALT-K *anywhere in Outlook* and it will take you to that screen.  No more clicking on that small space for your mailbox title, just press ALT-K!

That’s all there is to it, Outlook Today comes on when you open up Outlook, and checking your to dos, is amazingly easy.

Principle V – Reprioritize and Complete Items on your To-Do list

I don’t actually visit the Tasks folder in Outlook all that much, when I’m done with a task, I simply check its checkbox on Outlook Today and that’s how I mark my tasks complete.  To change the due date on a Task, you can click on the actual title of that Task and it will open up that task directly.  Often, this is where I re-set the due dates for tasks.

That’s really it.  If you put in the effort to making these things easy to do, I think it’s a lot easier to make these practices habit forming.  If, on the other hand, you don’t commit to the keyboard shortcuts, and don’t actually focus on this for a few days, I believe, it’ll be difficult to adopt.

Next Steps

I’m always looking for new and better ways to do this.  Right now, this is the system that works best for me, but other systems might work better for you.  Either way, I believe that focusing on these 5 things will help you:

1. Not let things fall through the cracks.
2. Better understand where your time is going.
3. Not feel overwhelmed by the many things you probably have to keep in your mind all the time.
4. Take control of your life and get back to doing the things, you really want to be doing.

Either way, take it in small steps, trying adhering to these standards for an hour (consciously), and then a day, and then try one-week of really focusing on this.  It’ll be more effort to think about this stuff up front, but after a week, you’ll find you don’t need to think about it anymore, that’d be my guess.

Good luck, hope this is at least interesting, and hopefully helpful to someone out there.