Currently I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself. My inbox has only 5 items in it and while work is very busy, I feel on top of my tasks and I know what I have to do.

This might not sound like much of an achievement but for me it's a transformation. I used to live and die by my inbox. If you wanted me to do something, you had to send me an email and hope that I didn't receive too many others. From time to time, I'd file everything into folders, marking the things that I hadn't done as unread, but then I got distracted by my inbox and forgot about them. Every time I sat down to do some work, I ended up reading through my whole inbox and "re-deciding" what I was going to do with each and every email. Getting started on something took me at least 15 minutes.

Not exactly ideal!

Then two things happened: I installed the 2007 beta and I received an email from Alfred. As Charlene mentioned yesterday, the 2007 release has a pretty nifty to-do bar as part of the main Outlook window. And as well as showing a snippet of your calendar, it also has a task list.

Alfred's email explained his task management system. His approach was simple: if an email arrives that requires action, mark it as a task, give it a due date and then file it. If you get asked to do something: create a task and set the due date.

In the past I've always struggled with the task function in Outlook, but the to-do bar (and the integration with email and OneNote - more about that another day) has made a huge difference. So I crunched through all my emails and set them up as tasks (finding a few too many overdue items along the way). Items that I know will need a while to work on get reminders set as well.

Now when I come in to work, I read through my email and process it all: quick replies for things I can deal with immediately; creating tasks for longer actions. Pretty much everything gets filed or deleted. It doesn't take me more than 15 minutes.

I use categories to distinguish between different types of actions: yellow is for quick actions; red for urgent items; blue for things that other people need to do, which I need to chase; and green for personal tasks.

I'm spending a lot less time reading (and re-reading) email and I'm getting a lot more done. When I sit down at my desk, I know immediately what I should be working on, and when I finish that the to-do bar reminds me what to tackle next. It sounds far too simplistic, but having it integrated into the main Outlook window really has made a huge difference.

Better results, faster? For sure!

Ps. If you want more information and some background on this feature, check out Melissa Macbeth's blog