Datasheet

Making Outlook Your Control Panel
The huge amount of information you receive, process, and store in your
brains nowadays increases stress levels and slows you down like a computer
with the hard drive full. Everyone was taught since kindergarten to retain
information because information is unchangeable. That’s no longer compati-
ble with today’s paradigm: that knowledge evolves . . . and quickly. You need
to discover how to critique, select, and filter information before it even occu-
pies your brain. To be productive, you need to filter and select valued infor-
mation to help you achieve your goals. Without some training, most people
find it difficult to keep up with the information avalanche and end up trapped
beneath it. Understand the problem and start using Outlook to organize the
incoming information flow according to your priorities, thus increasing your
quality of life.
Making Outlook your control panel means managing your time and tasks by
writing or downloading your information and organizing it by priorities, thus
achieving your goals (see Chapter 2 for details).
Downloading your memory
Don’t tie a string around your finger or place a sticky note on your PC screen
anymore. Instead, tell Outlook to remind you. Are you leaving the Office?
Print the reminders list or synchronize it with your cell phone or PDA.
Many people wake up daily and inhale their breakfast because they don’t
have time to sit down and eat it, and they’re always late. An ambulance driver
doesn’t drive 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He has to rest. So why are people
running around as if they were working in an emergency room? Anxiety, stress,
and lack of priorities are the roots of this kind of behavior. Downloading your
memory into an agenda or daily planner doesn’t remind you of your commit-
ments unless you open and read it. Outlook allows you to turn off your
ambulance-driver behavior so that you can achieve your commitments and
priorities. You can set up pop-up alarms and reminders
for events, deadlines,
meetings, or anything at all.
Time commitments and to-do commitments aren’t the same thing. You can
adjust to-do commitments according the due date and your priorities, but
time commitments aren’t so easy to change.
⻬ Time commitments: The 5 p.m. tea at Shelley’s house begins at 5 p.m.
sharp, so don’t be late. Any planned arrangement at a specific time is a
commitment. You can use the Calendar to schedule your arrival and
leaving time. For more on scheduling, see Chapter 12.
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Chapter 1: Changing Your Outlook on Managing Business
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