Free What To Do When There's Too Much To Do by Laura Stack Page A

your voicemail and decide on a consistent method for recording calls in one place.
    5. If someone leaves you information on your voicemail that you need to save, don’t just save the message. Instead, transcribe it, enter it in your CRM, or create a Journal entry in Outlook, tagged to the correct Contact. Bottom line: Get it off the voicemail and into your trusted retrieval method for historical communications.
    6. How do you keep people from leaving you voicemails? I like to change my outgoing greeting when I’m out of the office to something like, “I’m not in the office right now. For immediate assistance …” and then give them a way to get out of the voicemail system, such as hitting 0 and dialing 2 to be transferred to another person. Or I suggest they e-mail instead. People want to have good service even when you’re not there. Some may still leave voicemails, but you’ll receive fewer than you would have with a standard out-of-office message.
E-mail Equivalents
    Undoubtedly, your e-mail is probably the biggest organizational challenge you deal with today. Make no mistake: E-mail actually
is
your work, because all those messages represent something you need to do and decisions you need to make. But many people are paralyzed by the sheer volume of messages or don’t have a systematic way of pulling action from e-mail. So most people leave messages in their inboxes to languish and get buried by the onslaught of new incoming e-mails.
    I’m a Microsoft Certified Application Specialist in Outlook (MCAS), and I’ve been providing Outlook training to corporate clients (including Microsoft!) since the 1990s. 20 I believe there’s no better tool than Outlook for managing and integrating your e-mail, tasks, notes, contacts, journal, and calendar. But many people simply don’t know how to get the most out of Outlook, because it’s not the most user-friendly piece of software. I’d estimate most people use about 15–25 percent of its capabilities. Most training consists of “here’s your inbox; have fun.” So in this section, I’ll explain the processes of using Microsoft Outlook, since around 95 percent of my corporate clients use this software. A few others use Lotus Notes, GroupWise, Google Mail, Outlook for Mac, or Mac Mail. The principles are exactly the same, but you’ll need to figure out the commands for your particular platform.
    Let’s walk through e-mail processing using my 6-D System:
    1. Delete the e-mail. It’s the simplest and most effective way to reduce your e-mail volume. This doesn’t require extensive explanation; I hope use your delete key often—about 80 percent of the time!
    2. Forward it to someone else and either delete or file the original e-mail so it’s no longer in your Inbox. Or send a Task Request (right-click, select Move to Folder, select Tasks, click the Assign Task button, type in the person’s name, type instructions, and Send.) The e-mail is gone from your Inbox but can be seen in Tasks when you View by Person Responsible. Now you’ll easily see who owes you what.
    3. If you can’t delete or forward an e-mail, and it’s a simple e-mail requiring a quick answer, follow the Three-Minute Rule. Just hit Reply, type, send, delete/file, and move to the next. Get it out of that inbox! Stop clicking around and reading e-mail without replying to it.
    4. The fourth step, Date, is the big black hole of e-mail management. If an e-mail requires a reply but you can’t do it now, what should you do with it? Do not leave it in your inbox! You also don’t want to simply file it (unless you made a task or a note), because you might forget about it. How do you ensure you’ll see that e-mail again on a specific day, such that you have time to handle it before it’s due? That’s the big question. You need the electronic equivalent of the paper tickler file, so you’re