Each Day Empty

Today Gina Trapani wrote two articles about two of my projects on Lifehacker.com, the premier website with lifehacking tips and tricks.

The first article is about Fingertips, a free utility that enables you to quickly add items to any list in Outlook. I developed it to make it real easy to use Outlook as my trusted system. I will definitely write more about Fingertips on this website.

The other article is about The Happy Outlook Book, the book that I wrote about using Getting Things Done in Outlook.

Or as Gina Trapani says:

"For more GTD-inspired Outlook productivity strategies like this one,
check out the Happy Outlook Book e-book,
my source for this excellent Move and Copy toolbar tip."

Thanks Gina!

Did you know? Since Outlook 2007 you can hide or display the Navigation Pane (at the left side of the screen) by clicking Alt+F1.

Use Alt + F2 to toggle the display of the To-Do Bar at the right side of the screen.

Ctrl + F1 hides or displays the Ribbon, this doesn’t work in the main Outlook window, but it can help to free up some space when editing a Task Item or other item.

Did you know that using a simple [w] in your emails can greatly improve the quality of your life? Read this step-by-step explanation for Microsoft Outlook to find out how this works exactly.

If you delegate, order, or ask anything by email, you can instruct Outlook to add that email to a Waiting For list, just by adding a simple [w] to the body of the email.

A [w] at the bottom of your email is so inconspicuous, that most people will not even notice it. However, it can be a powerful tool to keep your Waiting For list up to date and your mind at rest.

To enable this feature, we’ll have to create a new WaitingFor-Email folder and add a rule.

I copied this description from my webpage at http://waiting-for.com. I built that website to inform others about the [w] and encourage you to do the same if you want.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you receive a lot of mails each day, it can be quite handy to see immediately if a mail was sent to you directly, or if you’re just on the CC list.

In Outlook you set this up like this.

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to this weblog.

My name is Taco Oosterkamp and I’m fascinated by using Outlook in the context of Getting Things Done, the system for time and stress management that was developed by David Allen.

On this blog I’d like to share tips and tricks about setting up Microsoft Outlook for maximum productivity. I will take inspiration from both the Happy Outlook Book that I authored last year and the training courses that I develop and teach in the Netherlands.

Use the sign up box at the top-right corner to receive all published articles for free.

Enjoy! 
Taco

(And yes, that’s my real name and it has nothing to do with burritos :-))