Implementing Gettings Things Done® with Outlook
Every person who implements Getting Things Done has their own system. Here are some of the details of mine.
The specific version of Outlook I use is Outlook Office Professional Plus 2013, but I imagine any relatively recent installed version of Outlook has similar features which can be leveraged. After processing, all of my tasks to get done (either in the form of Meetings or Tasks) are housed in Outlook.
There are only three ways that “stuff” can be eligible to be processed:
- Notes I take during meetings
- A Pocket Notepad
Not matter where I am, if something is going to become something that I will Get Done, it has to come through one of these three “inputs”. This has generally worked pretty well.
A couple of edge cases I’ve had to come up with work-around to cover are when 1) when I’m driving and 2) during the middle of the night if something occurs to me that I need to do and I want to note it without waking up my wife.
When I’m driving, I’ve found that I can use the “Long Press” functionality of the Bluetooth auxiliary line in adapter I use and the “Take a Memo” command on my Android phone to send myself an email message if I think of something in the car that I need to do later.
For not waking my wife when I need to take a note, I use a pilot’s pen which provides just enough light to take a note in my pocket notepad which I keep by my bedside during the evening.
Through some complex IT wizardry that is provided by my company, my voicemail appears in my email inbox as audio attachments, so my voicemail is handled via my email.
I am an adherent of Inbox Zero but I do not abide by that belief strictly. First thing in the morning when I arrive at my desk (or sometimes before then on my phone) I’ll quickly scan all my messages to see if there is anything extremely urgent. If there is, then I will deal with it first.
After that, as I have time, I’ll go through my emails in reverse chronological order and “process” them, as per the canonical GTD workflow diagram included below.
One quirk of my own GTD implementation is that I rarely delete any work email. In my experience , email correspondence is the block-chain ledger of record for corporate America and can be used to verify who said they would do what by when. Verbal agreements after they have been codified into meeting minutes and sent out after a meeting can also be tracked, making saved emails a invaluable audit trail of prior commitments.
It is not uncommon for someone to dig up an email from years ago to (try to) hold someone to account for a prior commitment made.
So, I keep all my emails.
In Outlook there is the ability to create “Quick Tasks”, which can be used to help semi-automate the lower portions of the Processing Workflow Diagram.
I have a Quick Task which automatically takes the text of an email and copies it into the body of a meeting request, another one which attaches the email to a task in Outlook, and another which will take an email I just sent, and create a “Waiting for” task so I can track whether the person has done it.
Quicksteps which I haven’t been able to figure out how to create are:
- send an email and immediately create a waiting-for task with the email I just sent as an attachment. Currently this is a two step process of sending the email and then finding the email I sent in my Sent box and then selecting a quick step to create a task and attach it
- opening an attachment, editing it, saving my edits, and inserting the edited file into a reply without having to save it to my desktop. Not a big deal, but unnecessarily clunky I think.
If anyone has any better ideas how to do these two things, I’d love to hear them in the comments.
If I defer the email to an action to do it later, I’ll use the “Create a task with the email as an attachment” button, and then set that task to have some reasonable due date in the future. I have found from experience that if I don’t assign some sort of due date to a task, it will never happen.
I usually view my tasks in a “Timeline” view, and they will look something like the screenshot below.
How I take notes during a meeting I covered previously so now I’ll turn to my pocket notepad.
Pocket Notepad
I use an Levenger Swiftnotes notepad to write down ideas and things I have to do outside of meetings. I’ve found a notepad is perceived as much less rude than whipping out my cell phone to take a note (presumably because no-one trusts that you are truly taking a note and not checking your email, or because we’ve all developed a Pavlovian distaste of someone pulling out a cellphone in the middle of talking to us). They leather notepad holder from Levenger last about five years. The paper refills that go inside the Levenger notepad holder last about a week or two, so I buy them in bulk online. The 2 1/4 by 4 1/4 refills fit the Swiftnotes notepad holder great. The pen that comes with the leather notepad holder isn’t great so I replaced it with Fisher space pen.
I try to process my notes from my notepad every Friday, but sometimes that slips into the next week if meetings get in the way.
Anyhow, that is my system, and it’s working pretty well to help me over the years Get Things Done.