Posts filed under 'Workflow'
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
Kathy Sierra at
Creating Passionate Users
posted
Build something cool in 24 hours
yesterday, based on an idea for total immersion / ultra-rapid game development from the wonderfully named game developer, Squirrel Eiserloh:
The notion is this: stick people in a house for 48 hours, with a goal to have something created at the end… participants may be collaborating (like building a game together) or working alone (musicians composing, writers writing, etc.). The key is the process - a process that forces you to supress the “inner judges” that stifle creativity, and gives you not just permission but an order to create as much as possible, as fast as possible… even if what you end up with is 97% crap.
The point is to learn something valuable from the experience… by working under the ad-hoc/jam constraints, you’re able to “improve your craft” and discover things about yourself and the work that you might never find in your traditional work environment… What could take weeks, months, or years to evolve suddenly happens in hours.
Great stuff - and just the kick in the pants I need to get one or two of my projects really moving again. It’s like a
vertical day
on steroids.
The thing is the team-working part of this reminded me of an incident that took place when I was a conference producer. I had put together a conference on manufacturing and, then as now, teams were a hot topic. The speaker I invited to talk about teams promised to be provocative and - bless him - he was (Note to all conference speakers: provocative is good).
Half way through his presentation he stops dead and says:
Let’s take a break. Together with the people at your table, design me a dog walking machine. You have five minutes from now. Go!
There were half a dozen people at each table, so we all turned to face one another and got to work. Or at least we thought we got to work. Afterwards, the speaker sketched the various machines on a board and made jokes about how
the consultants who were sponsoring the conference
had come up with an effective, but
very expensive
solution
, and we all had a laugh at the speaker’s suggested machine which included a roller skate and a large spike (sorry dog lovers).
Eventually someone asked the speaker: “Why the dog walking machines?” His reply was illuminating:
A bit of fun. And to prove a point. When I started the clock on your five minutes, how many of you got straight to work? And how many of you took a few seconds to overcome embarrassment? Then you had a round of introductions, which you should have done this morning when you first arrived, but you were too nervous, or because you had introduced yourselves this morning, but you’ve forgotten each others’ names. Then you passed round business cards. Then you didn’t say or contribute anything because you didn’t want the others to know that you
didn’t have the right answer
. Then, with probably thirty seconds to go,
one of you
sketched the first thing he could think of and showed it to the rest of you. You all thought “I could do better than that” but you all approved his design, because - uh oh - time’s up.
So please understand - working in teams is tough. You cannot just come to the door of your executive suite and pronounce to your people “I want you all to work in teams.”
We
are supposed to be at the top of our field, the best of the best. And if
we
can’t work together in a team on a simple, fun task, then how will
your people
take to being stuffed into a new way of working, for eight or more hours a day, with their livelihoods at stake?
I love the simplicity, the purity of Kathy’s idea - in fact I am inspired to jam solo on a web project this weekend - but when teams are involved, especially in a work context, things can get tricky. Some participants may be less committed to team working; some may be concerned that the boss will get credit and their good ideas will be glossed over. Some may have forceful personalities; others may have great ideas, but speak too softly to be heard. Some may even be determined to sabotage the process.
None of these things are insurmountable problems, especially not if there is good management and facilitation before, during and after the jam (think
Rosa Say
,
Lisa Haneberg
and
Johnnie Moore
for starters). But whatever you do, don’t just go to the door of your executive suite and pronounce to your people: “I want you all to build something cool in 24 hours.”
Jam sessions, then, may well be another one of those areas where
simplicity is hard work
.
August 25th, 2005
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:
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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:
- Sort
- Set in order
- Shine
- Standardise
- 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
.
June 12th, 2005
I’m back
Christina Wodtke
has a neat
write up of a John Markoff talk
about his new book,
and the following talk by a panel of luminaries who pretty much paved the way for most of the technology we use today.
The sentence which resonated with me was this one:
I woke this morning joyful to have one foot in cyperspace, and one foot firmly in the mud of earth, and knowing I needn’t pick between them and, in fact, the world is better if none of us ever do.
I have not been blogging for several days now - to the point where friends have emailed to say “are you alright, Adrian?” - because I have been allowing myself to feel overwhelmed by offline work. My thought process:
- I want to blog
- I can’t blog until this work is done
- Anxiety about not blogging, inactivity on the work front
- Repeat from step 1.
The big, head-slappingly obvious point here: I can blog
and
work. Blogging may even serve as a nice warm up for some writing work I have been fretting over. To paraphrase Christina, I don’t have to pick between them and, in fact, I am more likely to get the work done well if I stop trying to choose between the two.
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June 11th, 2005
Anagram
is a pretty neat utility which captures address and telephone number text blocks from email or the web, then sorts the information into the correct fields to create an Outlook contact. When it works, it’s a brilliant timesaver, but when I tried it a while ago, I found one flaw: Anagram’s handling of UK address and postcode combinations was poor.
Until now. Marc Orchant on the The Office Weblog,
, noted the new version’s “Enhanced text processing for UK addresses.”
I downloaded the generous 45 day trial and asked Anagram to capture an email signature which included a name; a UK address; phone, fax and mobile numbers; a URL, and an email address. Everything, including the address was captured flawlessly, and the whole process - from highlighting the target data to closing the new Contact - took less than ten seconds. It’s a massive timesaver and - with the strong pound - costs little over a tenner.
Download Anagram now
.
I am sure I was not the only one to email Anagram’s makers and ask them to improve their UK address support, but it’s great to see user requests answered like this. Well done, Anagram
May 24th, 2005
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