Without printing it out
Maninacan,
I don't always print out my e-mails. Sometimes it helps, though, to jot it down in a quick planning session. I do use Outlook and have a lot of folders that I store all my e-mails in.
Here's how you could do it in Outlook.
First the setup. You can create subfolders under Outlook's main folders. I have done this and my hierarchy looks like this:
-Inbox
- -@Action
[list:1e43a9859b] -Project A
-Project B
-Project C
-@Defer
-@Waiting for
-Reference
-Consult-Liaison
-Emergency Management
-Family
-MHS
-Personal
-Professional
-Residency Training[/list:u:1e43a9859b]
I have Outlook configured so that when I am reading my e-mail, I have the list of e-mails on top, the preview pane on the bottom and the folder list on the left-hand side.
I also use an outstanding program called Nelson Email Organizer, or NEO. This program hooks into Outlook and has a terrific search capability. I just dump an email into a reference category and I can search out fairly quickly for what I need when I want to find it later.
So here I am processing e-mail. First up is one of those news group e-mails about antidepressants. Immediately goes into defer. I can read that when I get around to it.
Second is one from the department secretary with the department phone list update attached. I click on the attachment, save it to My Documents folder which mirrors the same categories as my Outlook inbox files. I then drag the e-mail over to the MHS (Mental Health Services Dept) folder and drop it in.
Next is an e-mail from Mike on Project A. Projects A, B and C are the big honking gigantic multistep projects or areas. Mike and I have several sub projects, but sometimes when you have a big area, it is handy to keep all the stuff related to it in one file. Mike wants me to make a presentation to the executive steering committee on a big assist visit we have coming up. Hmmm....sounds like a new project.
Drag the e-mail over to the task folder and it will create a new task for you. The task item window pops up with the e-mail subject as the name of the task.
Hmmm.... Let's edit that and call it.....ESC Presentation. Go down to the bottom of the task where you see the category box and choose the category Projects.
Now go back up into the note field and you will see the text of the e-mail. Scroll down to the bottome and do a little brainstorming on the next actions for this project and make a little mini list. Suppose we did this and this is our list
-Draft ideas for ESC presentation
-Research background on the assist visit
-Call the executive secretary for the ESC and find out when they want to put this on the calendar.
-Call Scott and discuss ideas with him.
While the original task window is sitll open, hit SHIFT-CTRL-K and another task window opens. Type in Draft ideas for ESC Presentation. Go down to the category and choose, @computer from the categories you set up. Repeat this for the calls and choose @Calls for your categories. Save and close each task. Close the main project task.
Repeat as you go through your e-mail.
Now when you have your calendar view up, configure the task pane to show the tasks by category and they will line up @Calls, @computer, @office and so on. Projects will be down at the bottom.
When you do the weekly review, you can go to the task folder and minimize all the @ tasks and just view the projects category.
Hope this was clear and helpful.
Paul