PIFEM - a closer look

jkruse — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:59:00 GMT

I recently posted on a new email management system called Pay It Forward Email Management (PIFEM). The response has been amazing, however some of you have asked for screenshots of how I use this system day-to-day.

Well here are some screenshots of my Outlook client:

My "Not Flagged" folder - this is where new emails arrive before I process them. When an email arrives I first categorise it based on Importance and Urgency, then use a Flag to decide when I will action it (Today, Tomorrow, or later).

Every day I schedule time first time in the morning and last thing in the afternoon, to process emails. This ensures emails are actioned every day. If I get spare time during the day (ha!) then I may revisit my Not Flagged folder.

Why do I only do this twice daily? Well email is asynchronous after-all, and I get so many that if treated them like real-time communications then I would never get any real work done - I would live in my email. If people need to contact me urgently I have IM and a phone.

I have turned off all new mail notifications such as sounds, previews, and taskbar icons.

This is where I do my real work. Once emails are categorised and flagged, I go to my "Follow Up - Today" folder. Only items I flagged for today are visible here - items flagged for tomorrow or later appear in my "Follow Up - Later" folder.

I action emails based in order of priority (A1 first, then A2, B1 and B2), and when they are completed I flag them as "Completed" which makes them disappear from all views (after all once actioned I'll probably never look at them again). If I do need to access completed items I can return to my default Inbox view, however I very rarely do this.

I have minimised my folder list and my calendar/To-Do view, as they tend to distract me. With these mini views I get a summary view of my day. Note that my Follow-Up folder item counts are based on total emails, not unread emails.

This also ensures I get maximum screen real-estate for my Today folder and email preview.

At the end of every day my goal is to ensure that nothing is left in my "Not Flagged" view or my "Follow Up - Today" (as they've hopefully all been actioned/completed, or consciously pushed back to a later date).

Many of you have asked how Windows Mobile fits into this. When I am on the road I typically read emails, but only action important/urgent ones (A1). Most emails I just I triage for later action. Windows Mobile 6 allows me to Flag as "Today" or "Completed", which means that they later appear in my "Today" view when I return to Outlook (although they are uncategorised - categories are my wishlist for future versions of WM), or if I mark them as completed they never even appear on my PC at all :)

So that's a quick run-through of PIFEM and what it looks like. For information on how this relates to email best practice (e.g. the 4 D's of email management), or how to configure Outlook to do this, visit my original blog post for the link to download an instructional OneNote file from Ian Palangio's SkyDrive - both of which can be found here.

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Email overload? PIFEM!

jkruse — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 06:24:00 GMT

Do you get more email each day than you can handle? Are you up until midnight doing email? Do you miss important emails?

I receive literally hundreds of emails every day, most of which need some sort of action, and not being able to process them effectively means I'm not doing my job effectively.

Go from this......

Angus has just blogged about a new email management system that we (Ian Palangio, Angus and myself) have been developing recently.

....to this.

We took best practices of email management (e.g. the 4 D's Email Management) and time management (e.g. prioritisation), and integrated it with the technology of Outlook 2007 and Exchange.

What we came up with is the Pay It Forward Email Management (PIFEM) system.

The Pay It Forward idea is from the Kevin Spacey movie Pay it Forward there is one key premise to this course:

IF YOU DECIDE TO TRY THE APPROACH OUTLINED, AND YOU ACTUALLY FIND IT USEFUL, YOU HAVE TO PAY IT FORWARD AND TELL 3 OR MORE OTHER PEOPLE ABOUT IT AND GET THOSE PEOPLE TO CONSIDER TRYING THE APPROACH. IF THIS INFORMATION IS TRULY USEFUL, THE CONCEPT WILL SPREAD. IF THIS INFORMATION IS NOT TRULY USEFUL, THE CONCEPT WILL DIE A NATURAL DEATH.

To quote Angus:

I'm not an email slacker, every email I get I action (and no - that doesn't mean delete).
When I triage my email I choose if I do it today, tomorrow, next week.

I then do today's activities and that all I need to do.
Pay it forward because once you implement it, you must pay it forward by helping others implement this.
This is life / job changing email management

Ian documented the process and the online package is available in his SkyDrive (if you don't have OneNote you can download a free trial).

Click the image below to download from SkyDrive:

OneNote was used as this is a multi-dimensional document and was developed collaboratively within Microsoft.

Let us know your feedback!

Johann's Unified Communications : pifem

PIFEM - a closer look

Email overload? PIFEM!