Posts filed under 'Getting Things Done'

Organise your Outlook e-mail with NEO Free

This is great news for Outlook users: NEO (short for Nelson Email Organizer) is now available for free .

NEO works with Outlook to index your e-mail and gives you several new ways to categorise and work with your contacts and messages. Your mail is still sent and received by Outlook, but you handle it in NEO. On installation, NEO syncs with Outlook to categorise your existing messages, then automatically stays in sync as you send and receive. Any plug-ins that you use in Outlook still work - I use SpamBayes , for example, to filter spam.

NEO works with Outlook’s folder system, so I have now set up a folder for each of my projects. This means that I can have mails from person X stored in more than one folder (because X is working with me on more than one project) and I can have mails from several different people stored in folder Y because all those people are working on that one project. If mail is not specific to a project, I file it in a single Reference folder, which I have nominated in NEO as my “Quick File” - I simply press ctrl-i and the message is filed.

Of course all that sounds like a recipe for disaster when it comes to finding mail again later, and it would be if I was relying on Outlook alone. But NEO provides not just a folder view, but a Correspondent view as well. Using Outlook Folders, I can view all messages related to a given project, regardless of who sent them. Using Correspondent view, I can view all messages to and from a given person, regardless of project.

If NEO doesn’t recognise an incoming or outgoing email address, it automatically creates a new Correspondent “file,” which it keeps in the New section of the Correspondent view. Periodically, you can check and amend the properties of New Correspondents before making them Current. Correspondent “files” can handle multiple email addresses too - it’s a simple drag and drop to set that up.

If you don’t send or receive mail from someone for a while, the Correspondent is moved into the Dormant part of the view. You can specify how long any Correspondent should be held in New or Current, before being moved. Bulk mail - newsletters and such - are similarly dealt with. It’s a real time saver to be able to “Quick File” all my newsletters into Reference, but still see each newsletter individually in the Bulk Mail view.

If that’s not enough, NEO’s search, unlike Outlook’s, is lightning fast.

If you are used to Outlook, this is a slightly different way of thinking about email, but the learning curve is not steep and NEO provides truly excellent demos and tutorials .

, take note: I now feel much more confident about filing e-mail and I find myself far less resistant to processing my inbox. The other surprise benefit is, now I no longer use Outlook for email handling, I have been able to make it a far more productive space for managing projects and tasks (hint: close Outlook’s distracting folder explorer and remove all e-mail-related icons from the Outlook Bar).

How good is NEO? Since I downloaded NEO Free at the weekend, it has become indispensable. The only thing I miss about the Outlook email interface is the ability to tickle email . In every other respect, NEO is superior. I have joined the referral programme, so I make a few dollars if you click a link here and buy the souped up PRO version, but to be honest I can’t see myself making a great deal of money when the Free version is so good. Seriously, if you are an Outlook user, download NEO Free now .

October 6th, 2005

Make things better: aphorism or action item?

Marshall Goldsmith , via Lisa Haneberg , extols all leaders to “Make things better”:

Real leaders are not people who can point out what is wrong. Almost anyone can do that. Real leaders are people who can make things better.

Lisa says:

I know that I have poo-poed to-do lists in the past, but I also know you all still have them. So put this item on your to-do list every day.

Make things better.

In a thoughtful comment on Lisa’s post, Bob Ashley suggests that “Make things better” is simply an aphorism not an action item, a triumph of form over content.

All three of them have something - let’s fit it all together:

  1. Leaders do make things better
  2. Make things better is too generic to go on any to-do list (sorry, Lisa), but
  3. Make things better is a great standard by which to benchmark your to-do list

Thus, at your next planning session, review the projects and actions on your lists and think: does this project or action make things better? If it does, great; keep that item on your list and get busy. If it does not, can you reframe the action item so that it does make things better? If you can’t reframe it, purge it from your list, then focus on those actions which do make the leadership grade.

I wonder what Phil Gerbyshak from the Make it Great blog makes of all this?

4 comments August 14th, 2005

Blogging takes 4 hours a day - or does it?

Debbie Weil just did an of MicroPersuasion about his blogging habits. Steve spends 4 hours a day blogging! Bert at Open Loops summarised Steve’s approach as follows:

  • He monitors 350 blogs daily

  • He scans, links, and posts in “one motion”

  • He “writes” longer pieces once or twice per week due to the time and intellectual requirements

  • He does all this throughout the day and then dedicates a few hours in the evening to blogging for a total of 3 - 4 hours per day

A commenter on Bert’s post wonders what Steve is “getting in return to make it worth spending so much time on it.” Well, if I needed blog PR, the first name I would think of is Steve Rubel. For many people, Steve’s is the only name they would think of. That powerful a personal, international brand can only be established and maintained with a lot of effort. 4 hours a day seems reasonable to me.

Bert also commented that maybe he needs to “kick it up a notch” to match Steve’s pace. Not necessarily. If your business is blog marketing or PR, then, sure, Steve sets the benchmark. But what if your main business isn’t blogging? I take 3 things from this interview:

  1. Dedicate set times to your blogging. Establish a routine.

  2. Focus your reading and blogging. If Steve can monitor 350 in four hours a day, you or I could monitor 40 or so in half an hour a day. 40 is not a lot if you want to write about everything under the sun, but it’s perfect if you focus on one area.

  3. Adopt a GTD approach. Your RSS reader is your inbox. If you can respond to something you read in 2 minutes or less, post to your blog right now (that’s the equivalent of Steve’s “one motion” scan/post process). If it will take you more than 2 minutes, write your intended post title on your calendar (if it’s time-critical), or on the appropriate action list if you can post any time.

PS Debbie’s is also worth a read.

Add comment August 13th, 2005

Free teleseminar with David Allen

Microsoft is sponsoring a free Getting Things Done teleseminar with David Allen on 18 August at 12:00 til 1:00 pm Eastern time. That’s 4:00 pm GMT for the UK GTD fans.

4 comments August 13th, 2005

Get sorted with the five Ss

This ties in with Rosa Say’s clutter busting personal productivity project and with my part in Lisa Haneberg’s 2 Weeks 2 Breakthrough project . Lisa has suggested that participants might “get wickedly organized for a full goal assault on Monday AM.”

So as I binned and sorted through my files this morning, I found a long lost note to myself (oh, the irony, the irony), detailing the 5Ss approach to manufacturing productivity. Don’t be put off by “manufacturing” - this will work anywhere. The 5Ss are:

  1. Seiri : tidyness. Throw away all unwanted, unnecessary or unused stuff. Don’t fret about throwing things away, the goal is to get even the essential items to a bare minimum.

  2. Seiton : keep everything in the right place. Keep the tools you need accessible, hide materials you don’t need regularly. Return things to their places after use. Goal: every single item has its own place, and each place is labeled with the name of the item it contains.

  3. Seiso : keep your space clean, remove all traces from the previous task before starting the next. Goal: keep everything clean enough to make a good impression on a surprise visitor.

  4. Seiketsu : develop a personal sense for organizing your things and maintaining cleanliness, both of yourself and your environment. Develop routines, optimize your system according to your needs. Use all five senses to spot things that are out of place or unclean, so that you can correct them.

  5. Shitsuke : stay disciplined doing the above. Elimate the bad habits and make the good habits your permanent practice.

If you feel uncomfortable with the Japanese, then you can always use some English synonyms:

  1. Sort
  2. Set in order
  3. Shine
  4. Standardise
  5. Sustain

I don’t remember where I saw this first (so apologies to anyone who feels ripped off) . Update : I think I made my long lost note after a visit to Blog before you think! I am reminded of this by the list of 5S-related links over at LifeHack.org .

If you want more, there’s a good write up of the 5Ss here and a company called Enna provides all kinds of resources for implementing 5Ss in the office .

3 comments June 12th, 2005

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