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You can also select the “Manage Views…” command from this menu to open the “Manage All Views” dialog box. The “Compact,” “Single,” and “Preview” choices appear by default. You can then select the name of any of the views listed in the menu that appears to apply them to your Inbox. Then click the “Change View” button in the “Current View” button group. The first step in changing the Inbox view in Outlook is to open the Inbox folder.
#Organise outlook folders mac os
Mac OS Ventura-Mojave Keyboard Shortcuts.
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I clean up the action folder and move the done emails to Reference. I especially go over the Waiting-For mails and follow them up. Once a week, during my weekly review I follow a process to bring the system back to a trustful basis. And my email processing is tightly linked to my usual GTD process. My experience with this minimal folder setup is very good for a couple of years now. searching, beats filing and retrieving by almost 40 seconds! People in average search 17 seconds for the email but need 58 seconds to find it manually in their folder system! But even with a good filing system in place, opportunistic finding approaches e.g. They found that a lot of effort and preparatory work goes into complex email folder setup. IBM research conducted a field experiment with 345 experienced email users to compare structured email retrieval i.e. But I after I found a study on that topic I could trustfully fall into the arms of empirical research. The ExperienceĪt first I was very sceptical in keeping one big pile of email, because I was afraid of never being able to find the email I was looking for.
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Currently, I am experimenting with creating a pst-archive file for every year. I still need a process for final archiving the reference folders. This is where I drop all mail that is processed and which I do not delete. I review once a month (or get an automatic reminder). They can have an auto-reminder on them or be only “someday/maybe” tasks that I go through when I have the time and energy. 04 ReviewĮmails that contain information which I want to review sometime in the future. I check it once every week during GTD weekly review. Holds emails that I have sent and I am waiting for a response or an action to happen. A linking action should be in my productivity system/action tracker because I like to separate email from actions. (Really) actionable emails that I need to answer or work on go in here. This folder should be zero as often as possible. Well, this is where all the email arrives. I use the following 6 folders to handle my email.
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Solve real problems first, then check your email. Remember: doing emails is not real productive work.Use search to retrieve mail: do not even try to skim through all folders when finding an email.Rather keep a big pile of processed email. Sort as little as possible but as much as needed: Don’t maintain a complex filing structure.Support the fundamental GTD elements: my email system works tightly with my productivity system (Reference, Projects, Actions, Waiting).This is essential to keep mental capacity unoccupied. Inbox Zero: My email inbox is empty as often as possible.It essentially consists of the following guiding principles which I derived from my experience. Having so many options for sorting made me slow in selecting the right folder and especially retrieving the email once filed away ( Paradox-of-choice Jam experiment, anyone?) The Guiding Principlesįor the last couple of years I set up and use a system where I combine the GTD approach (with many folders) together with the leanest folder setup I could come up with. Although it worked quite well in the beginning and served my slightly compulsive need for structure, soon I noticed severe drawbacks. My first approach was to setup an elaborate filing systems to sort my mail into many different folders: I had a lot of review folders for specific dates, project folders for running activities and some semi-alive random folders where I sorted the stuff that did not fit the structure. And going through my mails felt like swimming against strong current. But with the increasing amount of email it was not possible to keep an overview anymore. I knew which correspondence I needed to answer and which to follow up and I simply did. In the beginning of my corporate career I did not receive much email.
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