Feeling like you have too much to do and not enough time? Well, you’re not alone and I’m here to help you. Listen to the audio below and you’ll increase your productivity and be more focused. Also included below is an exercise to help you with the brain dump processes and ease the transition back to work and/or back to school.
Click here to download the handout exercise
Microsoft Outlook is a great tool to use for organizing your email and time. Outlook has many functions that will give you great advantages in staying organized. This article is part of a series of articles that will help you as begin organizing your Microsoft Outlook.
Maybe you’ve been using Outlook for awhile now but you haven’t been taking advantages of any of the helpful functions. Have you realized it is time to start organizing your Microsoft Outlook? Is your inbox overflowing? Then it’s time to get started. And the best place to start is an empty inbox.
Start by doing a quick clean up of your inbox, here is how. First create a folder for old emails. Right click on the inbox, and select new folder. Type Old Emails in the name field and click ok. Now move any email in your inbox that is two weeks old or more. This isn’t the end of the road for this email, you still have to sort it. Schedule a small chunk of time everyday to sort through your folder of old emails until you’ve emptied it. This means you’ve acted on, filed, or deleted all of your old emails. Shift +delete will permanently delete any emails you’ve selected. You can keep emails you have deleted for a week to two weeks before you permanently remove them.
Your email is not a system designed for filing. You may have left an email in your inbox because you needed the attachment connected to it. When you receive an email with an attachment you should save it outside of your email right away. You can save this email attachment using one of two methods. You could either open the email, click on “save attachment” in the file menu, or you could right click on the attachment and then select “save as”. When you save your attachment give it a name that will remind you what the content of it is. It is a waste of your time to have to open up multiple attachments searching for what you need because of unclear file names. When you are organizing Microsoft Outlook it is important to save the files you need outside of your email service so that you can effectively empty your inbox.
If it feels like an entire email should be saved and filed you can do that in a couple ways. The first is you can save it as a word document. In order to do this you are literally going to copy and paste from an email into a document. Or if you prefer you can go through a different process to save the email in my documents. First select the email you want. Then select “file”, followed by “save as”. Search for “my documents”, or a different location in your computer if you want. Enter in the file name you have chosen that will clearly identify your email message. In the “save as” type field click on the down arrow and choose Outlook Message Format (*.msg), and then save. You’ll notice the icon next to your file in my documents will show you have saved an email.
Organizing Microsoft Outlook should begin with a clear empty inbox. In the future remember your inbox is not a filing system! Once you have cleaned out your inbox of your old emails by acting on them, saving them, or deleting them stop the problem from reoccurring. The Rules Wizard in Microsoft is a great place to start. This will help you organize your incoming emails into appropriate folders so they are easier to sort and act on. Then you will never be buried in email again! Take the first step and start clearing them out today.
No matter how chaotic it gets at home, having a system for keeping track of kids’ things is essential. There’s sports schedules and phone lists, papers to sign, health records, music books, report cards, and precious keepsakes that tend to pile up around the house.
Then there’s the sports equipment, jackets, shoes, backpacks, lunch containers, homework, projects, and electronics that your children drop at the door when they come home from school each day. Times this by three to five kids and you’ve got a giant heap sitting on the floor on a daily bases.
The key to keeping your sanity and peace of mind is to create a place for them to easily hang their coat and backpacks. I love the storage locker system if you can create space for this in your home. Also, create a homework area and have all the necessary supplies handy for their projects as well.
Then gather all the sports equipment and store each child’s items in separate bins, for each sport. Store bulky equipment in a one area, sports clothes in their closet. If they play soccer and baseball, then have a small clear container for each sport and make sure to label the bins “Soccer Clothes” and “Baseball Clothes.” When you’re rushing out the door to soccer, the right socks and shorts will be in one place verses all over the bedroom or house.
Next, create a Family Reference Binder with tabs for each child. Behind each child’s tab you can file their sports schedules, music schedule and any other important phone numbers that you want to have at your fingertips! Everyone in the family will thank you for gathering all the papers and putting them in one central location!
Now to deal with all the other papers. Create a hanging file for each child and keep any awards, report cards and other keepsakes in this file for the current school year. At the end of the school year, simply take out the papers and file into their keepsake box. For larger artwork, just take a picture and store the photo in their school photo album. Or store large artwork in an art porfolio.
Be realistic about what school papers and artwork you are going to keep. The more stuff you have, the more time and space it will take up to store it. A good rule of thumb is to “keep the best of the best and let the rest go”. Ask yourself, “When was the last time you looked at your keepsake box stored in your attic?”
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Want To Use This Article In Your Newsletter or Website? You have my permission as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Sherry Borsheim is the president of International Association of Business Organizing and Simply Productive. You can visit Sherry, access her free article archive and grab lots of free stuff here. Sherry lives in Vancouver, BC Canada with her husband (her high-school sweetheart).
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