After spending time on the road, you can come back to find your Outlook Inbox overgrown and a weedy mess.  Although some people have professed allegiance to the “Inbox2” technique (which means dumping the mail into a folder that you never really check again), this could mean you may miss important emails. The color coding technique does help mitigate that risk; however there’s nothing like a healthy Outlook triage session. This will have you happy again to receive fresh emails. You too can son have an inbox as fresh as the first day of school.

The technique is an adaptation of the infamous Sean Seibel triage, which was explained to me in an in depth 90 minute serious discussion.  And of the many Outlooking techniques I have learned over the years, this one lasted a year, so definitely worthy to evangelize.

1. First, you have to have an insanely messy inbox – minimum of 500 emails, no more than 3000 (otherwise you need to consider the Inbox2 technique, created by someone who shall remain nameless in case you are wondering why he hasn’t responded to an email you sent him).
2. Most importantly, you need to select the option to Work Offline. Otherwise you’ll feel like you are digging a hole in the sand at high tide.
3. Next, you’ll need to create at 4 folders on your server (vs. local PST file). Keeping on the server ensures you have access to them when you are on the road.  Create the folders Action, Reference, Review, & Review (Internet) as a subdirectory of yourInbox:
   
• The Action folder is for items requiring a response from you.
• The Review folder is things you should read but don’t need to comment on.
• Likewise with the Review (Internet), except these mails contain information from the web. The separation is to create a separate sync category for offline & online documents. This way, you keep all offline content in one place for reviewing the folder from your cell phone or when you are on the plane. If you are always connected, you can combine the two Review folders.
• The Reference folder is for those FWs that people send you (don’t you love forwards). At first glance, it looks like TMI and meaningless but what if you need it one day? So save it as Reference until you can digest or file it properly .
4. Now you begin triaging. Write down the number of mails you are starting with.  Look at the clock and give yourself either 30 minutes or 60 minutes of uninterrupted time.  Be sure to have a beverage handy and turn off your cell phone. Open up your Inbox and start filing the email. Do not read the email, do not take any action unless it will take you less than 15 seconds.   When the time block has ended, check your rate. You’ll want to improve this over time.
5. Now most importantly, you’ll need to schedule a meeting with yourself to review those action items. Take time at the end or start of a day to clear out any actions. 
6. Set up your cell phone to sync with the Review folder.
7. Set up weekly meeting with yourself to read the online content in the Review (Internet) folder.

If you liked this tip, you may also like:

Sling Alibi | Color code your Outlook 2010 Inbox Messages

.NYC : Scheduling against multiple time zones with Outlook 2010

I could use some help finding a great tool that helps show many time zones in a guide similar to the beauty I created in MS Paint. Basically I want to be able to schedule meetings with people in more than 4 time zones and need a guide to see overlapping business hours. Right now, the yellow highlights indicate working hours (9am-6pm), and I have drawn red lines to try to find common times between multiple countries. The problem is that I have to adjust this seasonally. Right now, you are seeing the adjusted one for US Daylight Savings time & Israeli summer time.

Is there any client-side application that shows unlimited time zones side by side? I explored other options but it’s not enough. I suppose I could write one… I will add that as a to-do to my calendar, but, how will I know what time zone I will be in at the time? Now we need an app for that.

Windows 7 time zone management

Windows 7 supports 3 time zones in the system tray or you can place a gadget on your desktop for 8 time zones (thanks to the development team – aka Bryant Griffin Sr. for AGS Digital MultiClock).

Outlook 2010 time zone management

Outlook can show my meetings with two time zones side by side as well as schedule an appointment against a different time zone (very useful when you are on the road or whwn someone gives you a convenient time to meet according to their time zone).

No, not Dark Cloud referring to my current role responsible for Microsoft web strategy in Middle East Africa…although did steal repurpose the LATAM team’s sig”): and for me…in the midst of sunshine & invisible ash. (Yes, it’s been sunny throughout although the last time I heard quietness without planes was in Manhattan).

When you text friends, you need only query but once. Not a hundred times refining as you do with Search. With text, all you do is wait for the results to come back. If only Search worked this way.

After being grounded in Copenhagen for several days due to The Grand Pagaille, as the French are calling it – The Big Mess -  I ran a quick survey with my colleagues on how they are managing to get the minute by minute updates on which airports have re-opened. 

Ostensibly, the Danish choose to serve their news in Danish(!), making it a challenge for a non-Danish-yet-Rosetta-Stone-Danish-owning-wondering-what-to-do-for-updates-when-stranded-because-of-volcanic-ash individual.  So this is what we found in the….

Volcano News Index (VNI) shows that word of mouth & texting is more powerful than Search or Social Networking for local, non-English news

Assuming an individual cannot read the local news sources, we looked at 4 categories – Search, Social Networking, Analog Word of Mouth & Text Messaging as a way of getting localized data quickly.

For this index we measure:

• retrievability – how fast can you get information
• reliability – how accurate is that information
• effort – how much time, stress, and energy it takes to get this information

	Search	Social Networking	Word of Mouth (taxi drivers, shawarma sellers, & kind hosts)	Text Messaging
Retrievability?
Reliability?
Effort
Commentary	Searches for News in major search engines yield non local sources with significant lag time.	Twitter trending topics were inconsistent. Too much noise. Facebook searches unreliable rumors.	A bit disjointed and non-focused in scope, the information from locals was very current and up to date. We credit the Danish news (in Danish) as the source and our taxi drivers for translations.	Notifying friends of the dilemma, they reach out to their networks. The geometric progressions of information are fast, reliabile and work on a push model. When you text friends, you need only query but once. Not a hundred times refining as you do search. All you do is wait for the results to come back. If only search worked this way.

You can try the first 2 categories for yourself but sample results from last 2 prove to be quite informative:

• Text April 18, PM “flights will resume Tuesday out of Amsterdam. They are flying the planes at 41,000 feet above the ash”
• Text April 19 AM “Rome athens madrid open. Czech republic open at noon today. Vienna and stockholm open with limited service. However seems chaotic and unreliable overall”
• Taxi Driver April 19, AM: “The volcano ashes have shifted over to Denmark. A bus ride to Oslo is 8 hours. It is open”
• Shawarma Seller April 20, AM: “They are opening air space today, I am sure of it as they have nearly finished their test flights.”
• Text from April 20 PM  “U want austrian air via vienna @10.45am biz class tom for $2029. HURRY n let me know as that cancels in 8 minutes”

How can we build a search engine that gets us this type of tightly scoped, reliable answers to a single query “Help I am stuck in Copenhagen”?  Open for comments.

Energy savings begin with awareness

Microsoft Holm is a free, internet-based service that enables consumers to better understand their energy usage, get recommendations and start saving money.  On March 31st, Microsoft and Ford launched a collaborative effort which leverages Microsoft Hohm to enhance the electric vehicle ownership experience. First we had the Sync technology which began the trend towards more intelligent personal transportation and now we have Holm!

From the Holm team: “ Ford plans to integrate Microsoft Hohm technology into upcoming electric vehicle models, beginning with the Ford Focus Electric in 2011 and additional models following in 2012 and 2013.  Life with electrified vehicles, which need to be recharged daily, will require consumers to fundamentally change the way they think about personal transportation and energy use.  Our collaboration with Ford will help consumers drive greener miles at lower cost by helping them recharge smarter based on their schedule and charging rates.  You can get a taste for some of what we have imagined for consumers in the images below.”

“As more and more rechargeable electric vehicles become available, the demand placed on the energy grid will be momentous.  Addressing the challenge of how to manage that demand in a smart and affordable way —from energy utilities down to everyday consumers—is going to be critical. We believe technology will be essential in meeting this challenge. 

You can find additional information on this announcement, including a press release, video, and high-resolution photos and video at www.microsoft.com/news.  You can also visit our Microsoft Hohm web site here: http://microsoft-hohm.com as well as the Power & Utilities Blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/mspowerutilities.”

More Information on Microsoft’s environmental initiatives.

• Blog (Hohm): http://blog.microsoft-hohm.com
• Blog (Power & Utilities): http://blogs.msdn.com/mspowerutilities
• Facebook Fan Page (Hohm): http://www.facebook.com/microsofthohm
• Twitter (Hohm): http:/twitter.com/microsofthohm
• Blog (environmental): http://blogs.msdn.com/see/

For those of you who use text like email, Microsoft has a great application to backup those precious text messages, quietly behind the scenes, while you operate your phone normally. You can then view them online and read them just like email through a browser! You can even search through your text messages

The software will also backup your cell photographs, calendar, tasks, documents, music, etc. etc.  In the screenshot, you can see the photo preview screen. (What’s up with the Blackberry Ad Microsoft?  Funny that we have a policy where we can’t expense iPhone or Blackberry (no problem for me, if you can’t use iPhone secretly under the table in a meeting or while driving, it’s not for me) yet we are advertising it here? Hmmm)

Anyway, you can the opt to download the photos, archive to web, or delete them. Deleting them here will delete them from your phone, which is useful considering that deleting process can be a bit arduous on the mobile phone.

Want it?

1. Go to http://myphone.microsoft.com/
2. Login with your Live ID
3. Send a link to the download directly to your phone from the webpage by typing in your cell phone number
4. Once you receive the text message, click on the link and install the application.
5. From Programs on your phone, run Microsoft MyPhone
6. The first time, it will sync all your files. I send about 4000 texts a month, and had maybe 6 months of text on my phone, about 40 photos, and 100 other files. It took me about 2 hours for the first sync. Keep in mind you can use your phone normally during this time. Also be sure you have an unlimited or maxed out data plan, as normal charges apply.
7. Then go to web page again, and you’ll see all your information online and it’s completely searchable!

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