Digital Chaos Control

Tag: email

How To Easily Follow-up on Those Important Emails in Outlook
If you’ve gone through the process of email organization (see my blog post here: 4 Steps to Becoming More Responsive), then you hopefully have a streamlined inbox with just the most important emails.

You also should have a daily routine of dealing with those emails that consists of:
1. Evaluating
2. Acting On, filing, or flagging for follow-up
Flagging an email in Outlook creates a follow-up to-do item.

Your email is not only marked with a flag in your Inbox, it’s also listed in your Tasks view under “To-Do List”, in the To-do sidebar, and in the Daily Task List in your calendar.

(Outlook treats your email to-do a little differently than a task that you’ve created. You can’t assign it to someone else, for example, or track its progress. If you delete the email, then you delete the to-do.)

If your email account is a POP account, open the email and select a flag for Today, Tomorrow, Next Week, etc. If your email account is an IMAP account, you have only the option of a flag with no follow-up date.

You can then sort your email inbox by selecting “Arrange By: Flag” under the View menu.

You can also look at these flagged emails in Tasks under “To-Do List”. (Outlook lists IMAP emails under Due Date: No Date.)

If you want to create an actual Outlook task, rather than an email to-do, then you can drag the email to Tasks on the navigation bar. Outlook saves the email content to the body of the new task. You can now delete the original email if you wish. Since you will be able to assign a due date for the task, this is the recommended method for any IMAP account.

Here’s a detailed blog post outlining this method: How to Create a Task from an Email Message.

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June 7, 2016
What Everyone Ought to Know About Office Alternatives

Microsoft Office has been a workhorse for years.

Many of us first became accustomed to it in our corporate work. If you’re still working in a corporate setting or if you’re creating detailed documents, spreadsheets, or presentations on a PC, there’s still nothing that beats Office for standard and more advanced content creation.

Office is not cheap.

A single license of Office Home and Student costs $120, but we’re often working on multiple devices these days. If you want to install Office on your home computer, your office computer, and your iPad, you’re better off with Office 365, which costs $9.99/month. Other advantages to Office 365 include automatic updates and new downloads to new computers.

Office on the Mac has always been an afterthought for Microsoft, and not as full-featured as its PC equivalent. (However, Microsoft made many improvements in its Office 2016 version for the Mac.) Fortunately, if you’re on a Mac, you’ve got a great alternative – Apple’s application suite – Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. (Just remember to convert to the Office document equivalent when sharing files so that PC users can open them.)

If you don’t need the advanced options that Office provides, then Google Docs is worth checking out.

Mac or PC, you’ve also got an alternative with Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides. These applications are completely free to use on the web and also via the Google Docs mobile apps. Advantages include 15 GB of cloud storage space, easy collaboration with other Google users, and conversion to Office files for sharing.

Another option, perhaps even a better one than Google Docs, is Office Online. You can use the online versions of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel free of charge, with 5 GB of cloud storage. The online versions don’t have all of the features as the paid versions, but that may be fine if you’re not a power user.

Microsoft Office for Business also includes Outlook, which is a nice integrated email reader, contacts manager, calendar, and task manager. Outlook calendar and contacts can sync with your iOS device by installing the iCloud plug-in, but you’ll need to look at third-party apps for Android contacts sync, or sign up for a Google for Work account.

If you’re a Mac user and you don’t have Outlook, or you don’t want to use the Mac version of Outlook, then Mac Mail is a fine program and integrates well with the Mac Address Book. You will have to launch the Mac Calendar and Mac Reminders separately. (If you’d like to know how to integrate Mac Mail with Mac Reminders, read my blog post here: How to Ingrate Email with Task Management). The Mac Calendar and Mac Address Book can sync with both iOS and Android (through your Google account).

Windows has always had a basic email program as part of its Windows Essentials. In Windows 10, Microsoft released a new mail program with integrated calendar and contacts. (The jury is still out on this program as Microsoft works out the bugs.) With the release of Windows 10 Mail, Microsoft will no longer be updating Windows Live Mail, and will no longer support it for outlook.com email addresses. Unlike Outlook, Windows 10 Mail will sync with both iOS and Android contacts.

For years, I’ve been using a free program from Mozilla called Thunderbird as my email reader on the PC. Thunderbird, like Outlook, is extensible with add-ons, so I have a calendar add-on called Lightning, and another add-on that syncs with my Google calendar. There are available add-ons for contacts sync as well. Thunderbird is a full-featured program that may be a bit difficult for many people to learn, and the search function is limited. However, if you’re on a PC, you don’t have Outlook, and you have multiple email addresses that you want to manage in one place, then Thunderbird is an excellent option.

Need help with Office or your email program? Contact me.

June 6, 2016
3 Reasons to Stop Using Email as a To-do List
Staying on top of email chaos is not easy.

Even after you’ve followed the steps to manage your email inbox (see my blog post here: 4 Steps to Becoming More Responsive), you still need to deal with those emails that need a follow-up task. How do you make sure that you get those done, and that they don’t get lost in the daily shuffle?

There may be event invitations that you leave in your Inbox to remember the date. There may be questions from clients whose emails you need to follow up on later. There may be business partners sending information that you’d like to read when you have time.

The easiest way is to have a daily routine to review and act on those emails. If you flag the most important emails, you can review them daily. You can then delete them or archive them as you finish your follow-ups.

But it’s easy to get behind with those email tasks.

You may find yourself with a list of flagged emails that just keeps growing. They’re all important, but how do you find the time to get through them? Are they all equally important?

Here are three good reasons to not leave those emails as to-dos in your Inbox:
1. You may have to read the emails to see what they are. In a to-do list, you have clear task titles. You may even want to use the “action title” method that I mention in this blog post: I never finish anythin….
2. It’s not easy to prioritize your email tasks. You can try using different color flags or stars, but then you have to take context into consideration. Are you mixing your personal and work emails? What about emails from clients mixed up with emails from vendors?
3. While you’re working on your sorted, prioritized Inbox, you have emails coming in. You won’t see them until you change your sort order back to dated order.
Have another look at my blog post here: How to Integrate Email with Task Management and think about installing a task manager instead.

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May 27, 2016
How to Use Evernote to Keep Email Organized

Email can be difficult to deal with in an efficient and organized way.

Keeping emails organized into folders can help you to find the right email conversation, as can using your email search tools. But email correspondence is just one part of the story. If you’re trying to put together the history of working with a client, for example, you’ll have to search separately for related client files and notes. It’s not difficult to do, but it does take time and your search may come up with lots of unrelated information.

My previous blog post on email management here: 4 Steps to Becoming More Responsive can help. A better method may be to use a tool to keep email organized along with related information. Evernote is a great tool for this. (You can read more about using Evernote for managing client information here: 7 Tips to Manage Client Info.)

Also, if you’re organizing a trip, you can keep the research, photos, itineraries, email correspondence, and receipts in one notebook. If you’re managing a project, you can keep the tasks, notes, and email correspondence in another notebook.

How to save your emails to Evernote

The most efficient way is to cc: your Evernote email address in your email correspondence. This will put those emails in your default Evernote notebook. You can leave them there and use search to find those emails later, or you can go into Evernote and move them into other notebooks. You can also add those emails later by forwarding to your Evernote email address.

When you cc: or forward an email you can target a specific notebook by adding “@<notebook name>” to the end of the subject line. You can add tags by using #<tag> and reminders by using !<date>.

Emailing to Evernote requires an Evernote Plus paid account. Evernote also has a free version, but you’ll have the extra step of copying your email, going to your Evernote app, creating a new note, and pasting the email into it.

How to find your Evernote email address

When you sign up for an Evernote Plus account, you get an associated email address (something like username.XXX@m.evernote.com). You can find the address by going to your account info under “Tools” in the PC or “Help” on the Mac.

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May 3, 2016
Inbox Zero Eliminates Overload – by Michael Neuendorff
Do you suffer from email overload?

Terrible, isn’t it? Every time you open your Inbox the email just flows in like a waterfall.

The challenges with managing email are myriad. Here are a few:
- Feeling overwhelmed before even getting started
- Losing track of an email and asking the sender to send the email again. (Now there are 2 copies in the Inbox!)
- Difficulty prioritizing
- Looking at, but not dealing with emails. This becomes an unproductive pattern.
- Email seems more like a curse than a benefit
Can you relate? I worked with many people over the years that suffer from email overload. It’s a key reason why they feel chronically disorganized and unable to focus on what really matters each day. The email just keeps coming.

Here’s my true confession: I used to be that way.

I would routinely let my Inbox balloon to about 2,500, then I’d start cleaning up email for a period, usually over a holiday break, and get back down to 50 or less. After a few years of this, I decided enough was enough and devised some strategies that would work for me.

This was more than 2 years ago. Since then I’ve never had more than 100 emails in my Inbox. As I write this I have 19 emails in my Inbox. Here are my 6 rules I follow to manage email.
1. Move everything non-essential out of your Inbox. What I mean is to have a separate email address for personal email, which includes email from your bank, insurance company, restaurants you like, etc. This puts only business-related email into your primary Inbox. Second-level business email should go into folders via Rules or into another Tab ala Gmail. I use the Gmail tabbed approach.
2. Be militant about unsubscribing to email you don’t want from Senders you no longer care about. Too many people are lazy about unsubscribing thinking, “I might like the next email I get.” (Even though they really don’t.) If you see value, keep it. If you don’t, throw it out. Simple rule: You should read all the email you get.
3. Block time out for email cleaning at least every other day. I make sure I have a few hours to mow through my Inbox every few days. I am not willing to let email pile up so I make it a priority.
4. Don’t use your Inbox as a reminder system. People leave email in their Inbox to remind them to do things. Use a Task Manager like Asana instead. Use email as a communication tool. That’s all.
5. As soon as you deal with an email, file it away. I file email like crazy all the time. As soon as I reply to someone, I file their email. After they reply, I file it again. Over and over, file, file, file. By the way, this requires that you have file folders for everything and everyone.
6. Delete email constantly. If I’m not filing it, I’m deleting it. Just as with Rule #5, refuse to let email linger.
If you’ll follow these 6 rules you’ll have a fighting chance at Inbox Zero.

The reason you want to do this is because it will lift a huge weight off your shoulders and you’ll realize the true power of email as the powerfully efficient communication and moneymaking tool that it is.

Once you’re there, vow to never go back to the way it was. Ever.

If you’d like more tips about dealing with email, get these two books: Getting Things Done by David Allen, and The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes. These books cover much more than email, but their tips on this topic were instrumental to my approach.

Michael Neuendorff is an acclaimed Business Coach and Sales Trainer. Learn more about his business at http://www.buildandbalance.com.
April 19, 2016
I never finish anythin…

If you’re using your email inbox as a task list, you’re probably seeing it get out of control. Even if you’re flagging important emails and looking at your flagged email daily, are you feeling a little worn-down with how many emails you’re seeing? Seeing a long to-do list or a stack of actionable emails can leave you feeling like throwing in the towel.

You know that you can’t give up. You need to get through them because they were important enough to flag in the first place. The root of the problem is that it takes too much of your attention and decision-making skills to look at each one and determine the action needed.

Save your email as a task

In my blog post here: How to Ingrate Email with Task Management I write about integrating your email with a task manager. If you save an email as an actual task, then you can re-write the title and add notes to help you to remember what it is that you have to do. Wouldn’t it be much easier to look at a list of actionable tasks then a list of emails with vague titles?

You still may have a to-do list that’s long, but if you focus on your top 5 every day then you can whittle down your list over time. (If you list continues to grow because of too-full days, you may also want to look at delegating and outsourcing.)

Every task is an action

One great technique for a to-do list is to make every task an action. I.e., if you have an email from David titled: “Hey Robin, can we talk soon?” you need a task that’s more like: “Contact David and schedule a discussion”.

Here’s a great article about organizing your to-do list by emotion: Sort Your To-do List By Emotion. If I take the previous example and change it to this: “Contact David and schedule a discussion (Great Sense of Accomplishment)”, I would feel more motivated to get it done.

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April 15, 2016
Do You Swipe?
If you have a smartphone, you probably do. Apple’s iOS first popularized the use of swipe gestures such as swiping between app screens. In later iOS updates, Apple added more swipe gestures, such as swiping down to see notifications. Now, smartphone applications are adding their own swipe gestures, which are similar to clicking on something in a computer application and then selecting an action. But swiping is so much simpler, isn’t it?

When you think about all of the actions that you can take with an email – reply to it, forward it, delete it, archive it, move it, flag it, etc., have you ever wondered if there’s a more efficient way?

Swipe Gestures for Apple Mail

Apple, Microsoft, and lots of other application developers have been thinking about it too. Here’s what you can do now with Apple mail on your iOS 9 device:
- You can swipe on an email from left to right and mark the email as “Unread”.
- As you swipe slowly from right to left, you can select “Archive”, “Flag”, or “More…”. From “More..”, you can select “Reply All”, “Forward”, “Mark..”, “Notify Me…”, “Move Message”.
- Swiping quickly from right to left will delete the message.
If you don’t like these gestures, you can go to your Mail settings and change them.

On your Macintosh, you can swipe left on an email to delete it, or swipe right to mark it as read.

Other Applications are Going Further

Some application developers are going further. Here are a couple of examples:
- Outlook for iOS adds the ability to swipe to schedule an email. This is like a “snooze” feature for an email that you don’t have time to deal with right now.
- In Google’s Inbox app, swiping right marks the email as “Done.” Swiping left will “snooze” it, similar to Outlook’s “swipe to schedule”. Swiping down or up will close the email.
One of the biggest breakthroughs in technology was the mouse and the ability to move a cursor around the screen, click to select, and click to perform an action. In the mobile-centric 21^st century, we are moving rapidly toward an all-touchscreen world. Knowing the swipe gestures and other kinds of gestures for your favorite applications will keep you working efficiently.

Confused about how to swipe? Contact me.
April 14, 2016
How to Manage Emails and Tasks
If you’re like me, you spend a good part of the day in front of a computer. I have several to-do lists, consisting of project tasks, business tasks, and personal tasks. Throughout the day, I’m also getting phone calls and emails.

The phone calls are easy because they’re immediate.

I take notes during the call, bring up my calendar for scheduling, and then fill in my intake form with the information that I’ve written down. I can then transition to my task management tool, my project management tool, or my CRM (customer relationship management) tool. If I get the call when I’m away from the office, then I will do some of this on my mobile device and the rest when I get to my computer

Some emails are easy.

If I see any emails come in from a paying client or a potential client, I will deal with that email shortly. If those come in when I’m out of the office, I’ll respond on my mobile device.

Other emails become to-dos on their own.

There may be invitations to meetings or events or lunch. There may be clients out of the office currently and whose emails I need to follow up on later. There may be business partners sending information that I’d like to read when I have time.

Every single one of those emails becomes a task in itself. But they’re not on my to-do list, and they’re not organized into my daily blocks of time that I allocate for certain tasks. There is a risk that, by using my email inbox as another task list, there are things that won’t get done.

It may be fine for you to keep emails as tasks in your inbox. You could schedule some time every day to deal with those tasks. It’s a good idea in general to block out time every day to do email anyway – to categorize emails, archive, delete or flag. You can sort your inbox so that the flagged emails are at the top, and then spend that time dealing with them.

It’s easy to get behind with these emails tasks.

You may find yourself with a list of flagged emails that just keeps growing. They’re all important, but how do you find the time to get through them? Are they all equally important?

It may be more efficient to integrate those emails instead with whatever task management system you’re using. See my blog post here about email/task integration: How to Integrate Email with Task Management.

If you’re not using a task manager, then here’s some that you can check out:
1. Outlook
If you use Outlook for email and calendar, then it may make sense to use the built-in task manager as well. The downside to this is that you can’t quit your email program to focus on your task list. You may find that other task managers fit your needs better.
1. Google Tasks
If you use Gmail and Google Calendar, then Google Tasks may make sense for you. The interface is easy to use and it functions just fine as a straight-forward task manager.
1. Apple Reminders
Apple Reminders is another good, simple task manager, for use on Apple devices only. If you don’t need collaboration, then Apple Reminders should work for you.
1. Wunderlist
This is my choice for a task manager. I have Wunderlist installed on all of my devices so that I can sync and access my to-do list wherever I am. I can create multiple lists, sub-tasks, a “starred” list, a “today” list, and I can share lists.
1. Evernote
Evernote is more of an information organization system then a task manager. But many people like to use it for their to-do lists. You can create an Evernote Notebook for your to-dos and assign reminders for them.

Email can be a distraction in your otherwise productive day. It can be stressful to see those emails tasks piling up. You’ll need a regular routine to stay on top of those email tasks, whether it’s dealing with them as them come in, flagging them for follow-up, or integrating with your task manager.

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April 12, 2016
How to Integrate Email with Task Management

Staying on top of email chaos is not easy.

Even after you’ve followed the steps to manage your email inbox (see my blog post here: 4 Steps to Becoming More Responsive ), you still need to “deal with” those emails that require a follow-up task. How do you make sure that you get those done, and that they don’t get lost in the daily shuffle?

The easiest way is to have a daily routine to review and act on those emails. If you flag the most important emails, you can sort your inbox by flag. You can then review those emails daily and then delete them or archive them as you finish your follow-ups.

However, a more efficient way is to merge your email with a task management system. Your emails will then become integrated with your daily to-do list.

If you’re an Outlook user, then you can use the built-in Outlook task manager.

Flagging an email in Outlook actually assigns a follow-up task. If your email account is a POP account, this is pretty straightforward: open the email and select a flag for Today, Tomorrow, Next Week, etc. If your email account is an IMAP account, you have only the option of a flag with no follow-up date. You’ll have to drag the email to Tasks (in your sidebar) and then assign a due date.

If you use Mac mail, you can drag an email to your Reminders list.

Click on the “i” at the right of the reminder, and then choose the day that you want to be reminded on.

If you’re a Gmail user, you can create a Google reminder from an email.

Open the email, click on “More”, and then select “Add to Tasks”. Your Tasks window will open in the bottom right-hand corner. You can then click on the arrow next to your new task to give it a due date. (If you use the Google Inbox app on your mobile device, then see my blog post here: How to Manage Your Gmail Inbox).

You can also integrate your email with dedicated task managers such as Wunderlist.

Here’s how it works with Wunderlist: when you’re running the app on your device and signed into your Wunderlist account, you can send emails to your Wunderlist Inbox by forwarding to me@wunderlist.com. Once the email is in your Wunderlist Inbox, you can give it a due date.

If you’re keeping your to-do list in Evernote, then I suggest creating an Evernote Notebook.

You could call it “My Tasks”, and then you can then forward emails into that notebook. (You find your Evernote email address by going to “Account Info”.) When you forward an email to your Evernote email address, you can specify a notebook by adding “@<notebook name>” to the subject line. For example, if you forward an email titled “Request for more information”, you would add your “My Tasks” notebook name to that title, so: “Request for more information @My Tasks”. If you’d like to tag the email, also add “#<tag>” to the subject line. You can then go to your Evernote app and assign a due date.

Many of us like to use our email inbox as a todo list. It’s possible to do this, particularly by using flags to prioritize, but it’s more efficient to have all of your to-dos in one place, including emails that you need to follow up on.

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April 7, 2016
How to Use Email Flagging to Prioritize
If you’ve gone through the process of email organization (see my blog post here: 4 Steps to Becoming More Responsive), then you should have a streamlined inbox with just the most important emails. You also should have a daily routine of dealing with those emails that consists of:
1. Evaluating and Categorizing
2. Acting On, Filing, or Flagging by Priority
Flagging an email in Outlook actually assigns a follow-up task.

If your email account is a POP account, this is pretty straightforward: open the email and select a flag for Today, Tomorrow, Next Week, etc. If your email account is an IMAP account, you have only the option of a flag with no follow-up date. You can then sort your inbox by selecting “Arrange By: Flag”. (You can also look at these flagged emails in your task list.)

Gmail uses a star system to flag emails.

If you go to your Settings in Gmail, you can see which color stars you have to choose from. To assign a colored start to an email, keep clicking on the star icon next to the mail until you have the color that you want. You will have to remember what each means in terms of priority; red is typically used for highest-priority emails, then yellow, then whatever color you like. Your starred emails are groups by color under “Starred”.

Apple mail uses color-coded flags.

You can flag an email by selecting it and then selecting a color flag from the top menu. Flagging an email in Apple mail actually puts it in a separate Mailbox under “Flagged” (as well as leaving it in your Inbox.) You can rename that Mailbox to whatever you want to help you to remember what your priorities are. For example, you can rename the “Red” Mailbox to “High Priority”, the “Yellow” Mailbox to “Follow Up This Week”, etc.

Do you need help managing email? Contact me.
April 4, 2016