Three Things you Should do in Outlook Right Now to Keep Yourself Sane

I was listening to the folks at Manager Tools the other day. It’s one of my favorite podcasts, and they recently just launched a new audio blog that deals with smaller management issues. One I heard dealt with Microsoft Outlook’s ‘desktop alert’ feature (aka the Toast, because it resembles toast popping up in the lower right corner of your screen).

It reminded me of the three most important things you should do in Outlook if you want to be more productive. Here are my three favorite Outlook tips:

The Toast Popup

Burn the toast!
You need to set the Desktop Alert feature so it doesn’t pop up every time you receive an email. Not every email is so important that it’s worth interrupting what you’re working on. It’s sort of like a phone ringing while you’re having a one-to-one meeting with one of your direct reports. If you answer it, you’re basically telling the person you’re meeting with that you’d rather spend your time on whatever might be on the phone than with them.

If you’re a responsible manager, you’re always working on the thing that is most important at that time, so it’s really unlikely that whatever that new email says is more important that what you’re doing. Stay focused on what you’re doing, and you’ll be much better off.

To turn off the toast:

1. Go to Tools>Options, and click the “Preferences” tab.
2. Click “Email Options…” then “Advanced Email Options…”
3. Under “When new items arrive in my Inbox, uncheck the 1st, 2nd and 4th boxes.
   If you want to know, at a glance, whether you have new email waiting for you, keep the “Show an envelope icon in the notification area” checked.
   

Set a few exceptions
OK. Every once in a while, you do get an email that is really important, and you do want to be interrupted when it happens. Maybe you’re in IT, and you get an email notification if a server goes down. Ok, you need to know. The way to go is to set a few rules that will get your attention. When I get one of these important messages, my desktop alert (right, the Toast) pops up, and I get a dialog box showing me the critical message. The dialog box is there so if I’m away from my desk, I’ll see it as soon as I get back.

There are so many different options when creating rules in Outlook, that I won’t go into all of them here. The rules help in Outlooks is pretty good, so hit F1, type “rules,” and you should be good to go. The goal is to write enough rules to catch the really important stuff without having too many false alarms. It may take a while to find the balance that works for you.

I consider a message critical if it is

1. marked important,
   
2. from an “alert” server,
3. from Donette, or
4. from a small list of specific people and I am in the To field

Note: I also have a chicken little rule that processes messages from a small list of people that I’ve identified as likely to mark things urgent when they really aren’t. This rule runs first, and takes messages they mark important, and changes them to be not important. The names on my chicken little list is a closely guarded secret.

Keep your Oulook on the Calendar or Task view, rather than Email
Sounds simple, but it works. When my Outlook starts up, it’s on my Task list. It’s more important to keep what you planned to do today in front of you all the time, rather than email.  You can find this under Tools>Options. Click the “Other” tab, and “Advanced Options…”.

Also, when I’m done with email, I either minimize Outlook, or switch to my Task or Calendar views to prevent distraction.

Hope you find these helpful, and let me know what works for you.