Making Outlook work for you | Where does Outlook open for you?

 

If the Inbox is the first thing you see when Outlook opens you are starting your day on a very reactive footing. You are beginning from a place that is all about responding to the requests (or demands) of others. There is the very real temptation to dive in and being working through our emails particularly those with that little red exclamation next to them. The real danger in this is the ease with which we can be side tracked from the other work that you need to get done today. How often have we become so involved with our email that we have almost missed a meeting or suddenly realised that it was lunch time and there was a whole pile of work that we had been hoping to get done still sitting on our desk.

So what other choices do we have, where else in Outlook could we begin our day that was less reactive and more, proactive, more about the work we had planned to get done before email reared its ugly head? What about the Calendar? If the Calendar was the first thing you saw when Outlook opened, rather than being focussed on reacting to emails you would see all of those fixed time commitment already in your day, those meetings and appointments already organised. If in addition to this you team the Calendar with the Taskpad (or ToDo bar) then not only are we seeing our fixed time commitments in Calendar, we are seeing our flexible time commitments for the day captured in the Taskpad. With this set up you will find yourself becoming more proactive every time Outlook opens.

There are a number of steps you need to take to achieve this new opening point for Outlook. I am assuming here that you are starting from your inbox, in the mail view.

1. In the navigation buttons in the bottom left hand corner click on the button marked Folder List.

2. In the folder list itself, click on the Calender. (The calendar should be showing a one day view)

3. With the Folder List and Calendar showing, click on the View button, in the drop down list that appears click on Taskpad. This should bring the Taskpad into view on the right of the Calendar, completing the picture.

4. To make this the place Outlook opens, Click on Tools, then option. In the box that appears click on the Tab ‘Other’, then ‘Advanced Options’

5. On the page that appears click on the ‘browse’ button next to start up in this folder. In the popup box simply highlight Calendar and then okay your way back out to your new front page.

Now you have set up Outlook so that it has become a proactive tool to better manage your time, communication and information.

 

Priority Management 

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