I’m the Day-Timers community expert on productivity. So I asked them to put a brief survey on the Day-Timers Web site, asking, “When you think of something that you need to do, what do you usually do?” In this day and age of technology, the surprising answer was overwhelmingly “Write it down.” To date, 55% of respondents chose this option over others. This demonstrates that even with Blackberries, Outlook, cell phones and web based to-do lists, we still need and use paper and planners.
Picture this…you’ve dutifully put all of your information, appointments, phone numbers etc. into your Outlook and synced the information with your handy-dandy Blackberry. All is well. You hop on a plane for a business trip, Blackberry in hand. You’ve arrived at the Miami airport and whipped out your electronic device. The problem is, you forgot to charge it and the battery is dead. What is the client’s phone number? What was your hotel confirmation number…and was that appointment at 2:00 pm or 3:00 pm? The beauty of a paper planner is that paper doesn’t crash. Better yet, it’s much easier to jot down a note on a daily to-do list than pull out your handheld, turn it on, click around, and type a note on that tiny keypad with all those little drop-down boxes.A Day-Timer is a tried and true tool that won’t let you down. Try my own line of Productivity Pro® branded Day-Timer for handheld users.Even if you write things down temporarily, you can always enter the data when you’re back at your computer.Much easier than tapping.And it’s much more organized than having little scraps of paper and sticky notes all over the place because it’s too difficult to use your handheld for data entry.
Don’t get me wrong, I think technology is terrific. I use it on a daily basis, but I won’t be caught anytime soon without my Day-Timer. It only takes one crash or glitch to realize how useful paper can be.
21. Journal your meeting notes. Many people don’t know how to use the Journal feature in Outlook or even what it’s for! If you’ve ever accidentally clicked it, you’ll get a pop-up box that asks you if you’re SURE you want to turn on the Journal. Most people freak out and click NO. Next time, click yes. Open a new Journal entry, type up your meeting notes, put in the day/time of the meeting, indicate in the Contacts field who was at the meeting, and select a Category for the meeting name or project. When you select that Contact and click the Activities tab, you’ll be able to see the Journal entries (notes) from every meeting you’ve ever had with that person. You can also pull up your Journal entries by Category to review meeting notes as far back as you’d like. OR give your notes to your assistant, have him type them up in the text field of the original meeting notice, save, and send a message to attendees (under Actions).
22. Avoid meetings on Fridays. Many departments and teams just decide as an informal policy to schedule meetings Monday-Thursday if at all possible. Too many people try to take long weekends or duck out early, making scheduling and rescheduling a nightmare on these days, plus you’ll end up with a lot of no-shows. I try to leave Fridays open for personal appointments. I find if I put a doctor’s appointment in between business meetings, something always happens to derail one or the other. It’s hard to get my mind switched between different realms as well.
23. Always send or request an agenda and include it in the text portion of the appointment or include as an attachment. A basic agenda should include a statement of purpose (see #13), any logistical considerations, the decisions to be made, a list of the topics to discuss (in priority order), who is responsible for that item, and how long you are allotting for each one. Ask participants if they have any changes to the agenda items to let you know in advance of the meeting, so you can make adjustments if necessary. Once you get into the meeting, follow the agenda diligently, so you can ensure all points are covered, decisions are made, and the objective is achieved.
24. Don’t let Outlook pick the length of your meeting. The default is one hour, so that’s how much time people normally schedule meetings! Instead, match the length of the meeting to the purpose. If you’ve done an agenda (see #23), and you’ve determined you’ll only need forty minutes, then schedule for that. Time will expand to fill the amount of time available. If you’ve promised folks you’ll be out of there, people tend to work toward that goal. If there is slack time, more socializing will naturally take place and an hour will definitely get used. Some people try to build in “buffer” time—don’t cave to this habit. I purposefully under-schedule and announce the goal at the beginning, so everyone is actively moving forward.
25. For longer meeting, allow enough breaks. Give a break at least one break for every hour and 15 minutes, max. Let attendees know at the outset what to expect. If you keep rambling on, and they aren’t sure when they’ll get a bio break, they will just start getting up randomly and sneaking out. If you clearly state at the beginning, “We will meet from now until 10:00, and then we’ll break until 10:10,” etc. It is also common courtesy that if you’re meeting over a lunch hour to provide food.
26. Be considerate of those in other time zones. If you’re in the Pacific Time zone, and some of your meeting participants are calling in from the east, a 2:00 meeting puts them into departure time. Realize that people may have childcare commitments at the end of the day; an afternoon meeting (or vice versa for early mornings on the west coast) can severely inconvenience folks and reduce the odds of attendance.
27. Strike a balance on when to schedule a meeting. If you schedule a meeting too far out, you’ll get a bunch of cancellations and requests to reschedule as you get closer—or you’ll just get trumped by someone higher up. If you wait to schedule a meeting until the last minute, it’s hard to find a block of time when most people are readily available. So it’s best to schedule around one to three weeks in advance. Anything sooner than that or further than that is fraught with scheduling challenges and conflicts.
28. Let the meeting leader know as soon as you’re aware of a conflict with a scheduled meeting. If you have a change in your calendar but don’t want to “rock the boat,” you inconvenience more people the longer you wait. It takes effort to work schedules around appointments, so as soon as you know, raise the flag. The chair can determine if they can make it without you or if the meeting should be moved.
29. Display multiple Outlook windows at one time. Perhaps you want to see your calendar while looking at an email. While in your Inbox, right-click on your Calendar (either on the Folder List or the icon) and select “Open in New Window.” Outlook will open your Calendar in a separate window, which you can resize and move to where it’s most convenient for you, while still being able to switch back to the Inbox. This is especially useful if you have a large monitor or dual monitors.
30. Customize your Calendar to your preferences. Don’t be satisfied with the standard calendar layouts—make it your own! For example, you can automatically add holidays to your calendar. On the Tools menu, click Options, then Calendar Options, and then click Add Holidays. The weekends are also compressed by default. If you want to show Saturday and Sunday as separate boxes, right click in the Calendar and select Other Settings. Uncheck the box that says Compress Weekend Days. While you’re there, change the default setting for 30-minute time slots to 5, 6, 10, 15, or 60 minute slots (I use 15). Frequently schedule with people in another time zone? Avoid confusion by displaying another zone. Under the Tools menu, select Options. On the Preferences tab, click Calendar Options, Time Zone, and “Show an additional time zone” check box. Select the desired time zone and OK out of there.
11. Keep your calendar up to date. It’s frustrating when your colleagues are trying to set up appointments, and it appears that you’re open, so they send out a meeting request to a large group. You respond, “Sorry, I have a conflict on that day/time,” to which they respond by banging their heads on the desk in frustration, asking, “Then WHY didn’t you have it on your calendar?” Truly, if an organization is going to predictably use shared calendaring to coordinate meetings, you must keep yours current. It’s fine to use a traditional paper method as well, but if you schedule something on your “other” calendar, make sure to update your electronic one at regular intervals as well.
12. Include travel time in a single appointment and put the actual meeting time in the subject. If your meeting starts at 11:30, but it’s going to take you thirty minutes to drive there and fifteen minutes to get out of the building to your car, block out your calendar starting at 11:00 (so others can’t schedule with you). Then write @11:30 in the subject line, so you know the actual meeting time.
13. Do not accept a meeting invitation if the requestor can’t state in one sentence the exact reason you are meeting. For example:
- To inform our department of changes in the holiday pay policy.
- To sell management on our division’s plan to automate payroll processing.
- To brainstorm the best way to resolve the association’s budget deficit.
- To determine realistic sales goals for each region for next year.
- To discuss the critical skills required for successful performance as a first level supervisor.
14. Send lengthy reading materials at least 48 hours in advance. Participants express frustration with wasting time in meetings reviewing materials that were just handed out. They don’t have adequate time to digest the information and formulate questions. They could have reviewed that document while waiting in the doctor’s office yesterday. Don’t waste everyone’s time by forcing them to sit there and read together like kindergarteners—their time is much too expensive.
15. If updating a meeting already scheduled, send an update to the existing appointment. If you have already set up a meeting and invited participants, sending an email about the meeting forces them to either copy and paste the additional information into the meeting or have two meeting blocks for the same event side by side on their calendars, forcing them to open two items to get complete information. If you need to add information, send out a meeting update. To contact meeting attendees with a reminder or other message, open the original meeting request, click the Actions menu, and select “New Message to Attendees.”
16. Avoid meeting request responses. If you’re sending a meeting request to a large group and don’t need or want responses, in the open new meeting request, on the Actions menu, uncheck the line Request Responses. To make this the default. Tools, Options, E-mail Options, Tracking Options, “Delete blank voting and meeting responses after processing.” Or create a Rule (under Tools, Rules and Alerts, start from a blank rule) to automatically delete messages responses with certain words in the subject line.
17. Schedule time for preparation and action. Depending on your level of involvement in the meeting, you need time to get ready. You might need to start your preparation days before if you need to create a report or give a presentation. When you accept a meeting, immediately go into your calendar and block off at least 15 additional minutes separately for prep time, a bio break, refreshing beverages, and transfer time—and add more as necessary for mental preparation and review. Don’t walk into the meeting “cold.” In the same way, block out time at the conclusion of the meeting to review action items, activate them into your time management system if you can’t complete them right then, and get organized.
18. End meetings before the top or bottom of the hour. If you’re the one scheduling the meeting, don’t use the standard Outlook settings of hour or half hour blocks. If one meeting is from 1:00 to 2:00, immediately followed by another from 2:00 to 3:00, you will by default be late to your 2:00. So use either :15 or :45 start and end times, to allow transition time.
19. Limit attendees. Think through who really needs to be there. Don’t worry about “hurting someone’s feelings” if they aren’t included. If you simply want to keep a stakeholder or player in the loop, select them as “optional,” instead of “required.” Always assume that higher-ups have things to do that are much better uses of their time than sitting in your meeting. Think about how much money people are paid, and ask if your meeting is worth an hour of their pay PLUS what they otherwise could have been doing if they weren’t stuck in your meeting. Only invite people if they have a direct contribution to make to the meeting objective, and the desired decisions would not be able to be made without them. If their presence is only required for ten minutes, give them the first ten minutes, and then allow them to graciously depart. Keeping others who aren’t invited informed can be done with a quick email summary or inclusion on the distribution list of any meeting notes or minutes.
20. Confirm everything. I’ve often shown up for a meeting and the other person “forgot.” You’d like to think adults are all responsible and will do what they say they will do, but it’s always better to dash off a quick email. “Looking forward to seeing you on (date) at (time) at (location). Let me know if something comes up.” I don’t make people confirm that things are correct; I ask them to let me know if there is a change. Also make sure you get directions and map it out well in advance of trying to run out the door. I look at my calendar for the next day before I leave work and make sure I’m ready to roll on everything.
1. Determine if you really need to meet in person. How many times have you attended a meeting and asked yourself, “Why am I here?” Hopefully, you’ve started protecting your time from every person who wants a piece of it. If my clients want to meet in person, I charge a consulting fee. For telephone calls, no charge. Ninety percent of the time, a conference call will suffice. Extra travel time and expenses are involved when meeting in person, so avoid it unless dialogue and brainstorming are required.
2. Have meeting requests and responses go to your delegate, not to you. Don’t wade through all the responses; that’s why you have an assistant (if you do). Under Tools, Options, Delegates, select “Send meeting requests and responses only to my delegates, not to me.” Brilliant.
3. Create a private calendar to post appointments you don’t want others to see. We are all used to email folders, where we file email. Most people, however, have never created a calendar folder. A calendar folder IS a new calendar. To create one, follow the same drill for creating an email folder (right-click on the Calendar in the folder list and select New Folder). However, make sure the folder contains “Calendar Items” in the drop-down box. Give your new calendar a name such as “Kids Summer Schedule” or “Laura’s personal calendar.” I kept track of my kids summer activities in one, so my husband would know where his schedule was impacted for driving duty.
4. Check your appointments as Private when you don’t want others to read the text. Yes, you can! The Private box is a little, tiny box in the bottom right-hand side of your screen (Outlook 2003) when you create a new appointment. People who share your calendar will still see a block and that you’re unavailable, but they can’t read the appointment text.
5. Use the Category box to indicate the project, team, or committee. Every time you schedule an appointment or accept a meeting invitation, indicate what project it’s related to in the Category box. Use the Master Category List to add your labels. “Tag” each appointment with one or multiple categories. Then under the View menu, select Arrange by, Current View, By Category. Then you can see all meetings, past and present, you had with a certain group, person, project, committee, etc.
6. Can’t find an upcoming meeting with someone you know you scheduled? Tired of searching your calendar manually to find it? Instead, get into the habits of using the Contacts box at the bottom left of each appointment, to indicate whom you’re meeting with (can be multiple people). To find all upcoming meetings with a particular person, go to that Contact’s address card, select the Activities tab, and in the drop-down box, select Upcoming Tasks/Appointments. The people must be loaded in your personal Contacts list (not just your company’s global address book) for this to work. If a meeting invitation is used, this feature is automatic, and you don’t need to select the names.
7. As a courtesy to your coworkers, send a meeting invitation instead of an email when you’d like to connect. Rather than emailing colleagues and asking, “What’s your schedule today? Can we get together for 30 minutes?” take a minute to schedule a meeting invitation. While in your Calendar, select Actions, New Meeting Request, Scheduling Tab, Add Others, Add from Address Book, and select attendees. Check their availability on the calendar (this assumes you’ve been granted access to their calendars) and find an open time (or select AutoPick to let Outlook find the next available date/time). Send the meeting request. When invitees receive it, they can simply click Accept, and Outlook moves the appointment to their calendars for them. This saves the recipient time and also saves you from trying to coordinate multiple calendars manually.
8. If someone does send an email wanting to meet, convert it into an appointment. If your colleagues don’t understand the meeting feature and insist on sending emails for appointments, you can quickly turn an email into a Calendar item. Right-click on the email, select Move to Folder, and then Calendar. A new appointment window automatically opens, containing your email and any attachments. Fill in the date, time, and details, and then Save and Close. The message is moved from the Inbox into the Calendar automatically. No more manual copying and pasting!
9. Use labels to quickly “see” the layout of your schedule for the day. Right-click on any appointment in your calendar. Select Label. Select Edit Labels. Change the text to display the colors as you’d like. Pick colors consistently with your team (travel, multiple locations, training, personal, vacation, meeting, video conference, etc.) so you can quickly see where team members are working and what they’re doing.
10. Block out time to work. Sometimes you might want to actually schedule an appointment to WORK. To protect your time from others, schedule a Task on your Calendar (Outlook 2003). With the Task Pad view in the Calendar showing, click on a Task you’d like to complete. Hold the left mouse key down while you drag it to your calendar and release. An Appointment window will pop up, automatically inserting the task into the text portion of the appointment item. Fill in the time you want to work on the task on your calendar. Change the Show Time as field to Tentative, if desired. Save and close. The task will still be kept in your Task Pad, but now you’ve blocked out time on your calendar to work on it. NOTE: Do NOT put things you need to DO on your Calendar (that’s what Tasks are for), because if you don’t complete it, you’ll have to move it manually (not so with Tasks).
These days, most of us use handheld technology in all aspects of our daily lives, blurring the boundaries between work and home. Has this made you feel more overworked and less energized? If so, you need to learn how to break free from technology, turn it off regularly, stop letting it control you, and unplug in ways that boost your energy. Let’s chat about your electronic habits, and about how to regain control.
1. Plan your screen time and stick to it. It’s unnatural to focus on a computer or TV screen for hours on end instead of interacting with people. Yet this is precisely what most people do — and the subsequent feelings of social isolation and depression can be quite damaging to your energy level.
2. Put your life first. Don’t let technology eat up your free time; technology exists to simplify your life, not to complicate it. It’s up to you to keep it in check. A good start is to turn off all electronics an hour before bedtime.
3. Keep your electronic in-box empty. Slash through the electronic detritus to maximize your efficiency, and therefore your energy level. If you let your voicemail and email inboxes get overcrowded, important communications might fell through the cracks, straining a friend’s or client’s trust in you.
4. Get your computer organized. Too much computer clutter can drain your energy just by forcing you to hunt for things that should be easy to find. Delete old files, reorganize folders, and give files names that make their contents obvious at a glance.
5. Turn off your technology when you’re on personal time. You can’t recharge your personal energies if you’re always working. Once the workday is over, make yourself electronically scarce.
6. Avoid Obsessive Compulsive Technology Disorder. You don’t need to check your email constantly. Doing so is forces your brain to start/stop/start/stop constantly, which requires a huge amount of mental energy. Instead, turn off the technological distractions so you can get work done.
7. Just say no to instant messaging. Instant messaging is a great way to stay in contact, but too much of it steals time and energy you need for other work. Don’t be afraid to turn on the “DO NOT DISTURB” feature when you want to focus on a task that requires your complete concentration.
8. Match the message to the medium. Use the right means of communication for a particular message. Sometimes email is the most efficient way to communicate with a particular person; sometimes it’s better to pick up the phone.
Electronic devices are supposed to make your life easier, not more stressful. If they’ve begun to dominate your life — including your time off — step back and decide whether all that stress is worth the reward. It may be time to shed some of that technology, or at least to put it back in its place.
Pareto is very busy in the sales world. You know the 80-20 rule. In this case, it means that only 20% of salespeople spend 80% of their time on selling activities. Are you in this group? See if you recognize yourself. If not, here’s how you can join the group.
Put your fingers on it fast. Laura Stack is a professional speaker and author of Leave the Office Earlier® and Find More Time. She sees several time wasters that cost salespeople valuable selling time. One of the biggest time wasters is lacking a system to track client history. The system should include notes on conversations that took place, with whom, and when they took place. Stack says, “To be truly organized you should be able to have a prospect call you out of the blue and you should be able to immediately refer back to a conversation that took place years ago.” Without the system, you can’t be effective. You may even frustrate clients who have to repeat themselves and might have to rely on facts that aren’t correct. Stack uses ACT! to take notes while talking with clients on the phone. Many salespeople are unaware that Outlook can be used to track history. The journal feature allows you to take notes and attach those notes to the contact. Stack adds that you can use a manual folder system if you prefer. What is essential is to have a system to aggregate and retrieve client history.
There’s an unexpected time waster—the BlackBerry. It’s hard to use one for taking notes because you can’t type that fast. Stack sees salespeople taking notes on scraps of paper, place mats and even their hands. That haphazard system makes them more disorganized. She suggests, “Understand the features and benefits and decide if it’s for you.” It’s important once you do take notes to enter them into your system as soon as possible so they don’t pile up.
Get to work fast. Another time waster is when salespeople lack a plan or poorly plan their daily activities. It starts by having a system to schedule follow up tasks like telephone calls. If you tell a customer you will call in two weeks, you must follow through. Some salespeople think they can remember everything they promise. That’s far too taxing. Instead, a technology supplied or manual system works well to keep your promises. She says, “People will work with someone who is reliable more than someone they like.” Some inefficient salespeople begin each day thinking, “Who am I supposed to call today?” Stack says that when you come to work each day you should already know whom you’re supposed to call and what you’re supposed to do. If you work in inside sales, your planning can be the last task of the previous day. If you do a lot of driving, a week out is sufficient and more time is required for air travelers. In addition, at the beginning of each month Stack recommends reviewing activities for the coming month.
Work on selling. Stack sees many salespeople wasting time on activities that take them away from selling. One activity is constant email checking which she suggests reducing to once per day. She sees salespeople who take notes on spiral notebooks only to waste time flipping back through the notebooks to locate a particular piece of customer information. She often hears complaints about completing reports that are time wasters. Yet when she asks, “What have you done about it?” she often gets the response, “Nothing.” Stack reports, “If leadership knew, they would care as it’s directly impacting the profitability of the sales force.”
You may think you don’t have time to plan your selling. You really do. Stack says, “Organization is an enabler. Once it’s in place, it allows you to make more sales. It’s a launching pad to reach more sales revenue.” Sounds like it’s time to take the leap and join the 20% that are selling more effectively.
Maura Schreier-Fleming works with business and sales professionals on skills and strategies so they can sell more and be more productive at work. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results which is available at www.BestatSelling.com. She founded her company Best@Selling in 1997. You can reach her at 972.380.0200 or info@Bestatsellling.com.
Interruptions abound—a co-worker drops by to chat, the phone rings, and your boss sends you an email to handle something, pronto—all at the same time.With a flurry of activity, you respond to these various demands.All prove to be low priority, and an hour later, you return to your initial task, your energy waning.You decide you’ll work on the project in the afternoon, when your energy picks up again.Of course, after lunch, there’s some crisis, and after fielding a volley of phone calls and unscheduled visits from co-workers, the day ends, and the project is yet again unfinished.
You’ve lost your momentum.Much like your car has to work harder to accelerate from a complete stop, so does your brain.Although interruptions are a normal (and sometimes desirable) part of our work experience, there are times when it’s helpful to defend against them.
So try to eliminate distractions when you need to concentrate on a difficult task.It’s hard to get much done when someone or something is bugging you. It’s a major problem in most offices, particularly in those with open-plan architecture. If people aren’t talking or walking around, they’re coming directly to you to chit-chat. If they don’t come personally, they call you or send you email. This is fine for occasional socializing or if you’re working with someone on something, but at times it might be necessary to set limits on the chatting. This isn’t much of a problem when you have your own office; you can shut the door, and even lock it if necessary. If you’re stuck in a cubicle, however, there’s not much you can do to stop people from coming by, or even from parking themselves outside your cubicle and holding a long discussion with someone else. Try slipping on some noise canceling headphones to drown out the antics of passersby or your neighbor. People are less likely to interrupt you when you’re wearing a headset.I’m not sure why this is but it’s true.Just don’t get any eye contact. This can create a little privacy without seeming too unfriendly. Similarly, you can send your calls to voicemail and close your email program to give yourself some time to focus without getting distracted.
I have a friend who jokes there are always three people in her bed: herself, her husband, and her Blackberry. I was in California last week on vacation with my family and witnessed people typing away on their Blackberries while at Disneyland, with their children tugging at their pants legs, asking to go see Cinderella. I was presenting a seminar yesterday, and one participant kept looking up to say, "Would you repeat that"? not because I wasn’t clear, but because she wasn’t paying attention to me—you got it—checking her email during class. Examples abound but the bottom line is Americans are addicted to email. Slaves to the Send/Receive button, countless workers sit at their desks, waiting for the next Desktop Alert, beep, cursor change, envelope in the system tray, whatever trigger prompts their Pavlovian response to interrupt whatever they are doing and check it. And unopened email! A present—for me! Someone loves me. Many workers allow themselves to get sucked in the email vortex for an entire day and not actually complete any work. And then we blame the sheer mass for sucking all of our time, rather than acknowledging the reality: you are controlled by your email.
A new study released July 26 by AOL in partnership with Opinion Research Corporation reveals that more Americans are using portable devices to email around the clock from virtually anywhere—even in the bathroom and at church. Even more dangerously, 53% of respondents admit to tapping away *while driving.* Some other interesting statistics:
* 83% of email users are checking while on vacation;
* 59% of those with portable devices are using them to check email every time a new message arrives.
* 43% of users keep the device nearby when they are sleeping to listen for incoming email.
* 15% describe themselves as "addicted to email" (really? only 15%?)
These statistics are just sad. AOL was extolling this like a virtue, of course, that you can stay connected anywhere, anytime. I think it’s a dangerous message. We’re teaching people that in order to be productive and be a valuable worker, you have to be "always on," give up your private time, and check email at all hours of the night. Portable devices are very convenient when you’re traveling for business, sitting on an airplane, in a taxi, driving as a passenger in a car with nothing better to do, at a business conference to stay in touch with the office, waiting to pick you kid up from soccer, etc. There are certainly and definitely valuable uses for handhelds and they can be quite handy. But be very careful about throwing yourself upon the altar of email addiction and sacrificing the quality of your life balance and time with your loved ones.
The big differentiating factor is control. If you shut your Outlook down completely for an hour, would you be able to resist checking? Can you turn off your device for two hours while having a nice dinner with a spouse without thinking about it constantly? Would you get hives if your Blackberry wasn’t charged? Do you feel like the world is going to end? I’m not here to judge you and neither should anyone else—only you know—intuitively—whether you have a problem. Time to control yourself rather than letting technology control you. If you think it’s bad now, just wait to see what happens in a couple years.
Especially true is Nakagawa’s comment, "…the people who are the most productive don’t seem to have them."
I’m sure you have your beefs about Blackberry usage in your organization (or by your spouse, for that matter). If you were king or queen of the world, what "rules" would you create about Blackberry usage? In addition to the 10 the author lists, I’ll add the following from personal experience:
1. Do not pretend you are listening to someone by brainlessly mumbling "uh-huh" while you are answering an email on your Crackberry.
2. Pay attention to the presenter during training sessions rather than using the time as your personal Crackberry play time.
3. Use codes in the subject line when emailing, so Crackberry recipients can get your message without having to open it: "Do you know what the June budget figure is for professional services? END" (AR = Action Required, END = End of message, LONG = read later etc.)
4. Set your Crackberry to delete your email off the server when you delete it from your handheld (so you don’t have to do it twice).
5. Turn your Crackberry off when you are standing in line for the Matterhorn at Disney World with your poor children tugging at your arm.
I’ve always used RSS Reader 2.0 as my news aggregator/feed reader, until it started acting buggy, and I explored other options. After reading other blogs and postings on the subject, I decided to try NewsGator Inbox for Outlook…and I love it! What a time saver! It integrates right into my Outlook email client and acts just like an email. It has its own folder, and I can delete, forward, store, and search blog postings just like email. It adds a nifty "Subscribe in NewsGator" item to the Internet Explorer menu. I also like the wizard that lets you search feeds by keyword.
It has some disadvantages: you can only use it with Outlook, although NewsGator has different software versions as well. The only thing I don’t like is you can’t group RSS feeds.
There’s a free 30-day trial at the NewsGator InBox website; the software version is only $29.95, which is well worth the convenience of seeing everything in one place (if you’re an Outlook user).
Bottom line: If the average "Joe" had this tool when blogging first started, it wouldn’t have been near as confusing and more people would have taken the time to learn how to subscribe to RSS feeds.
