I've been using outlook 2007 for several months and one of the big improvements to managing projects and NA tasks has been the ability to include additional task folders in the new todo listing. The todo list is like a search folder that can combine task folders and email folders into a single listing.
A website that goes into more detail is the great write-up by David Ornstein "GTD using outlook 2007" located here: http://davidorn.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!9B3B8FD397272614!313.entry
Specifically, he has some nice filters for creating some new views for PROCESSING and flagging email which I never did much of before.
In addition to what he's documented, I've gone one step further with regards to setting up my projects.
I've set up additional task folders for larger projects and I include these in the shortcut bar of outlook so that they are all grouped together and readily accessable without using the folder view. By creating views (that I can apply to all my task folders) I can manage each of the projects using the same view structure.
The standard view I created for these 'task folders that are projects' is a view grouped by priority and category. For those tasks on a project I've brainstormed that are not yet actionable, I change the priority to low.
Then, for my main todo list view (aka the 'todo bar') I filter out 'low' priority tasks which leaves an aggregrated list of actionable tasks for all my projects and my regular tasks. To make it clear which project a task belongs to, I also include the 'In Folder' column in my main todo bar view. I group the view by category (context) and sort by start date/due date.
The only drawback so far to using the "projects in sub task folders" method is that those tasks not in the main 'tasks' folder will not sync to my PDA. This is not a particular concern for me since I'm mostly using the PDA for errands or contacts these days and my errands are typically in the main 'task' folder and sync up there fine.
Before outlook 2007 and the todo bar 'virtual folder', it was not possible to have a single view include other task folders which is why I never found this method to be all that viable.
Anyway, thought I'd pass on something (using new features of outlook 2007) that is working well for my GTD processing of projects and NA tasks.
A website that goes into more detail is the great write-up by David Ornstein "GTD using outlook 2007" located here: http://davidorn.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!9B3B8FD397272614!313.entry
Specifically, he has some nice filters for creating some new views for PROCESSING and flagging email which I never did much of before.
In addition to what he's documented, I've gone one step further with regards to setting up my projects.
I've set up additional task folders for larger projects and I include these in the shortcut bar of outlook so that they are all grouped together and readily accessable without using the folder view. By creating views (that I can apply to all my task folders) I can manage each of the projects using the same view structure.
The standard view I created for these 'task folders that are projects' is a view grouped by priority and category. For those tasks on a project I've brainstormed that are not yet actionable, I change the priority to low.
Then, for my main todo list view (aka the 'todo bar') I filter out 'low' priority tasks which leaves an aggregrated list of actionable tasks for all my projects and my regular tasks. To make it clear which project a task belongs to, I also include the 'In Folder' column in my main todo bar view. I group the view by category (context) and sort by start date/due date.
The only drawback so far to using the "projects in sub task folders" method is that those tasks not in the main 'tasks' folder will not sync to my PDA. This is not a particular concern for me since I'm mostly using the PDA for errands or contacts these days and my errands are typically in the main 'task' folder and sync up there fine.
Before outlook 2007 and the todo bar 'virtual folder', it was not possible to have a single view include other task folders which is why I never found this method to be all that viable.
Anyway, thought I'd pass on something (using new features of outlook 2007) that is working well for my GTD processing of projects and NA tasks.